-NRLF 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.  CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 
MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


fcp  JHr.  Cotrep. 


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EVERYDAY  BIRDS.  Elementary  Studies. 
With  twelve  colored  Illustrations  repro- 
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HOUGHTON   MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 


BLUE  JAY 

I.  Male.     2,  3.  Females 


EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

ELEMENTARY  STUDIES 

BY 

BRADFORD  TORREY 

WITH  TWELVE  ILLUSTRATIONS  IN 

COLOES  AFTER  AUDUBON,  AND 

TWO  FROM  PHOTOGRAPHS 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YOEK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,   IQOI,  BY  BRADFORD  TORREY 
ALL  RIGHTS  RESERVED 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I.  Two  LITTLE  KINGS     .        £      •        •        •  1 

II.  THE  CHICKADEE       .      ,;•  •'    .    -.  •        •        .  7 

III.  THE  BROWN  CREEPER 10 

IV.  THE  BROWN  THRASHER    .        .        .        .        .  15 
V.   THE  BUTCHER-BIRD 19 

VI.  THE  SCARLET  TANAGER 22 

VII.  THE  SONG  SPARROW 26 

VIII.   THE  FIELD  SPARROW  AND  THE  CHIPPER        .  30 

IX.  SOME  APRIL  SPARROWS 35 

X.  THE  ROSE-BREASTED  GROSBEAK       ...  40 

XI.  THE  BLUE  JAY 43 

XII.   THE  KINGBIRD 47 

XIII.  THE  HUMMINGBIRD 51 

XIV.  THE  CHIMNEY  SWIFT 56 

XV.    NlGHTHAWK  AND    WHIP-POOR-WILL       .  .  .59 

XVI.  THE  FLICKER 64 

XVU.   THE  BITTERN 68 

XVIII.   BIRDS  FOR  EVERYBODY    .        .        .        .        .  82 

XIX.  WINTER  PENSIONERS 87 

XX.  WATCHING  THE  PROCESSION    ....  93 

XXI.   SOUTHWARD  BOUND 99 

INDEX                       105 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 
BLUE  JAY  .        .        .        .        .     (page  43)     Frontispiece 

GOLDEN-CROWNED  KINGLET 2 

CHICKADEE 8 

BROWN  CREEPER 12 

BROWN  THRASHER 16 

SCARLET  TANAGER 22 

SONG  SPARROW 26 

ROSE-BREASTED  GROSBEAK 40 

RUBY-THROATED  HUMMINGBIRD 52 

NIGHTHAWK 60 

WHIP-POOR-WILL 62 

FLICKER 64 

The  illustrations  entitled  A  Downy  Woodpecker  and  A  Branch  Estab- 
lishment, facing  page  88,  are  from  photographs  by  Mr.  Frank  M.  Chap- 
man and  were  first  printed  in  Bird-Lore. 


EVERYDAY  BIRDS 


TWO     LITTLE     KINGS 

THE  largest  bird  in  the  United  States  is  the 
California  vulture,  or  condor,  which  measures 
from  tip  to  tip  of  its  wings  nine  feet  and  a  half. 
At  the  other  end  of  the  scale  are  the  humming- 
birds, one  kind  of  which,  at  least,  has  wings  that 
are  less  than  an  inch  and  a  half  in  length.  Next 
to  these  insect-like  midgets  come  the  birds  which 
have  been  well  named  in  Latin  "  Regulus,"  and 
in  English  "  kinglets,"  —  that  is  to  say,  little 
kings.  The  fitness  of  the  title  comes  first  from 
their  tiny  size,  —  the  chickadee  is  almost  a  giant 
in  comparison,  —  and  next  from  the  fact  that 
they  wear  patches  of  bright  color  (crowns)  on 
their  heads. 

Two  species  of  kinglets  are  found  at  one  season 
or  another  in  nearly  all  parts  of  the  United 
States,  and  are  known  respectively  as  the  golden- 
crown —  or  goldcrest  —  and  the  ruby-crown. 


2  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

The  golden-crown  has  on  the  top  of  its  head  an 
orange  or  yellow  patch  (sometimes  one,  some- 
times the  other)  bordered  with  black;  the  ruby- 
crown  wears  a  very  bright  red  patch,  though  you 
may  look  at  many  specimens  without  finding  it. 
Only  part  of  the  birds  have  it,  —  the  adult  males, 
perhaps,  —  and  even  those  that  have  it  do  not 
always  display  it.  The  orange  or  yellow  of  the 
goldcrest,  on  the  other  hand,  is  worn  by  all  the 
birds,  and  is  never  concealed.  If  you  are  a  be- 
ginner in  bird  study,  uncertain  of  your  species, 
look  for  the  black  stripes  on  the  crown.  If  they 
are  not  there,  and  the  bird  is  really  a  kinglet,  it 
must  be  a  ruby-crown.  You  may  know  it,  also, 
—  from  the  goldcrest,  I  mean,  —  by  what  looks 
like  a  light-colored  ring  round  the  eye.  In 
fact,  one  of  the  ruby-crown's  most  noticeable 
peculiarities  is  a  certain  bareheaded,  large-eyed 
appearance. 

Unless  your  home  is  near  or  beyond  the 
northern  boundary  of  the  United  States,  you 
need  not  look  for  either  kinglet  in  summer. 
The  ruby-crown  is  to  be  seen  during  its  migra- 
tions in  spring  and  fall,  the  goldcrest  in  fall, 
winter,  and  spring. 

At  any  time  of  the  year  they  are  well  worth 
knowing.  Nobody  could  look  at  them  without 
admiration;  so  pretty,  so  tiny,  and  so  exceed- 


GOLDEN-CROWNED   KINGLET 
/.  Male.     2.  Female 


TWO  LITTLE  KINGS  3 

ingly  quick  and  graceful  in  their  motions.  Both 
species  are  of  a  prevailing  greenish  or  olive  shade, 
with  noticeable  light-colored  wing-bars,  and  light, 
unstreaked,  unspotted  under  parts. 

The  ruby-crown  is  famous  as  a  singer.  A 
genuine  music-box,  we  may  call  him.  In  spring, 
especially,  he  is  often  bubbling  over  with  melody ; 
a  rapid,  wren-like  tune,  with  sundry  quirks  and 
turns  that  are  all  his  own;  on  the  whole  de- 
cidedly original,  with  plenty  of  what  musical 
people  call  accent  and  a  strongly  marked  rhythm 
or  swing.  Over  and  over  he  goes  with  it,  as  if 
he  could  never  have  enough;  beginning  with 
quick,  separate,  almost  guttural  notes,  and  wind- 
ing up  with  a  twittity,  twittity,  twittity,  which, 
once  heard,  is  not  likely  to  be  soon  forgotten. 

A  very  pleasing  vocalist  he  surely  is;  and 
when  his  extreme  smallness  is  taken  into  account 
he  is  fairly  to  be  esteemed  a  musical  prodigy. 
Every  one  who  has  written  about  the  song,  from 
Audubon  down,  has  found  it  hard  to  say  enough 
about  it.  Audubon  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  it 
is  as  powerful  as  a  canary's,  and  much  more 
varied  and  pleasing.  That  I  must  think  an  ex- 
aggeration ;  natural  enough,  no  doubt,  under  the 
circumstances  (romantic  surroundings  count  for 
a  good  deal  in  all  questions  of  this  kind),  but 
still  a  stretching  of  the  truth.  However,  I  give 


4  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

but  my  own  opinion.  Let  my  readers  hear  the 
bird,  and  judge  for  themselves.  They  will  enjoy 
him,  whether  or  no.  Every  such  new  acquaint- 
ance that  a  man  makes  is  a  new  source  of  life- 
long happiness. 

The  enormous  California  vulture  is  said  to  be 
almost  dumb,  having  "  no  vocal  apparatus  "  and 
"emitting  only  a  weak  hissing  sound."  What 
a  contrast  between  him  and  the  ruby-crown,  —  a 
mere  speck  of  a  bird,  but  with  a  musical  nature 
and  the  voice  of  an  artist.  Precious  stuff,  they 
say,  comes  in  small  packages.  Even  the  young- 
est of  us  may  have  noticed  that  it  is  always  the 
smaller  birds  that  sing. 

But  if  all  the  singers  are  small  birds,  it  is  not 
true  that  all  small  birds  are  singers.  The  golden- 
crowned  kinglet,  for  example,  is  hardly  to  be 
classed  under  that  head.  The  gifts  of  Providence 
are  various,  and  are  somewhat  sparingly  dealt 
out.  One  creature  receives  one  gift,  another 
creature  another,  —  just  as  is  true  of  men,  women, 
and  children.  This  boy  "  has  an  ear,"  as  the 
saying  goes.  He  is  naturally  musical.  Give  him 
a  chance,  and  let  him  not  be  too  much  in  love 
with  something  else,  and  he  will  make  a  singer, 
or  a  player  on  instruments,  or  possibly  a  com- 
poser. His  brother  has  no  ear ;  he  can  hardly 
tell  Old  Hundred  from  Yankee  Doodle.  It  is 


TWO  LITTLE  KINGS  5 

useless  for  him  to  "  take  lessons."  He  can  paint, 
perhaps,  or  invent  a  machine,  or  make  money,  or 
edit  a  paper,  or  teach  school,  or  preach  sermons, 
or  practice  medicine ;  but  he  will  never  win  a 
name  in  the  concert  room. 

The  case  of  the  golden-crown  is  hardly  so 
hopeless  as  that,  I  am  glad  to  believe  ;  for  if  he 
is  not  much  of  a  musician  now,  as  he  surely  is 
not,  he  is  not  without  some  signs  of  an  undevel^ 
oped  musical  capacity.  The  root  of  the  matter 
seems  to  be  in  him.  He  tries  to  sing,  at  any  rate, 
and  not  unlikely,  as  time  goes  on,  —  say  in  a 
million  or  two  of  years,  —  he  may  become  as 
capable  a  performer  as  the  ruby-crown  is  at  pre- 
sent. There  is  no  telling  what  a  creature  may 
make  of  himself  if  his  will  is  good,  and  he  has 
astronomical  time  in  which  to  work.  The  dullest 
of  us  might  learn  something  with  a  thousand 
years  of  schooling. 

What  you  will  mostly  hear  from  the  goldcrest 
is  no  tune,  but  a  hurried  zee,  zee,  zee,  repeated  at 
intervals  as  he  flits  about  the  branches  of  a  tree, 
or,  less  often,  through  the  mazes  of  a  piece  of 
shrubbery.  His  activity  is  wonderful,  and  his 
motions  are  really  as  good  as  music.  No  dancing 
could  be  prettier  to  look  at.  All  you  need  is 
eyes  to  see  him.  But  you  will  have  to  "  look 
sharp."  Now  he  is  there  for  an  instant,  snatch- 


6  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

ing  a  morsel  or  letting  out  a  zee,  zee,  zee.  Now 
he  is  yonder,  resting  upon  the  air,  hovering 
against  a  tuft  of  pine  needles,  his  wings  all  in  a 
mist,  they  beat  so  swiftly.  So  through  the  tree 
he  goes,  and  from  one  tree  to  another,  till  pre- 
sently he  is  gone  for  good. 

Once  in  a  great  while  you  may  find  him  feed- 
ing among  the  dry  leaves  on  the  ground.  Then 
you  can  really  watch  him,  and  had  better  make 
the  most  of  your  opportunity.  Or  you  may 
catch  him  exploring  bushes  or  low  savins,  which 
is  a  chance  almost  as  favorable.  The  great  thing 
is  to  become  familiar  with  his  voice.  With  that 
help  you  will  find  him  ten  times  as  often  as  with- 
out it.  He  is  mostly  a  bird  of  the  woods,  and 
prefers  evergreens,  though  he  does  not  confine 
himself  to  them. 

If  you  do  not  know  him  already,  it  will  be  a 
bright  and  memorable  day  —  though  it  be  the 
dead  of  winter  —  when  you  first  see  him  and 
are  able  to  call  him  by  his  regal  name,  Regulus 
satrapa.  It  is  a  great  pity  that  so  common 
and  lovely  a  creature,  one  of  the  beauties  of  the 
world,  should  be  unseen  by  so  many  good  peo- 
ple. It  is  true,  as  we  say  so  often  about  other 
things,  that  they  do  not  know  what  they  miss ; 
but  they  miss  a  good  deal,  notwithstanding. 


II 

THE    CHICKADEE 

THE  chickadee,  like  many  other  birds,  takes 
his  name  from  his  notes ;  from  some  of  his  notes, 
that  is  to  say,  for  he  has  many  others  besides  his 
best-known  chick-a-dee-dee-dee.  His  most  musi- 
cal effort,  regarded  by  many  observers  as  his 
true  song,  sounds  to  most  ears  like  the  name 
Phoebe,  —  a  clear,  sweet  whistle  of  two  or  three 
notes,  with  what  musical  people  call  a  minor  in- 
terval between  them.  It  is  so  strictly  a  whistle 
that  any  boy  can  imitate  it  well  enough  to  de- 
ceive not  only  another  boy,  but  the  bird  himself. 

In  late  winter  and  early  spring,  especially, 
when  the  chickadee  is  in  a  peculiarly  cheerful 
frame  of  mind,  it  is  very  easy  to  draw  him  out 
by  whistling  these  notes  in  his  hearing.  Some- 
times, however,  the  sound  seems  to  fret  or  anger 
him,  and  instead  of  answering  in  kind,  he  will 
fly  near  the  intruder,  scolding  dee-dee-dee. 

He  remains  with  us  both  summer  and  winter, 
and  wears  the  same  colors  at  all  seasons. 


8  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

Perhaps  no  wild  bird  is  more  confiding.  If  a 
man  is  at  work  in  the  woods  in  cold  weather,  and 
at  luncheon  will  take  a  little  pains  to  feed  the 
chickadees  that  are  sure  to  be  more  or  less  about 
him,  he  will  soon  have  them  tame  enough  to  pick 
up  crumbs  at  his  feet,  and  even  to  take  them 
from  his  hand. 

Better  even  than  crumbs  is  a  bit  of  mince  pie, 
or  a  piece  of  suet.  I  have  myself  held  out  a 
piece  of  suet  to  a  chickadee  as  I  walked  through 
the  woods,  and  have  had  him  fly  down  at  once, 
perch  on  my  finger  like  a  tame  canary,  and  fall 
to  eating.  But  he  was  a  bird  that  another  man, 
a  woodcutter  of  my  acquaintance,  had  tamed  in 
the  manner  above  described. 

The  chickadee's  nest  is  built  in  a  hole,  gener- 
ally in  a  decayed  stump  or  branch.  It  is  very 
pretty  to  watch  the  pair  when  they  are  digging 
out  the  hole.  All  the  chips  are  carried  away  and 
dropped  at  a  little  distance  from  the  tree,  so  that 
the  sight  of  them  littering  the  ground  may  not 
reveal  the  birds'  secret  to  an  enemy. 

Male  and  female  dress  alike.  The  top  of  the 
head  is  black  —  for  which  reason  they  are  called 
black-capped  chickadees,  or  black-capped  tit- 
mice —  and  the  chin  is  of  the  same  color,  while 
the  cheeks  are  clear  white.  If  you  are  not  sure 
that  you  know  the  bird,  stay  near  him  till  he 


CHICKADEE 
/.  Male.     2.  Female 


Ill 

THE    BROWN    CREEPER 

IN  the  midst  of  a  Massachusetts  winter,  when 
a  man  with  his  eyes  open  may  walk  five  miles 
over  favorable  country  roads  and  see  only  ten  or 
twelve  kinds  of  birds,  the  brown  creeper's  faint 
zeep  is  a  truly  welcome  sound.  He  is  a  very 
little  fellow,  very  modestly  dressed,  without  a 
bright  feather  on  him,  his  lower  parts  being 
white  and  his  upper  parts  a  mottling  of  brown 
and  white,  such  as  a  tailor  might  call  a  "  pepper 
and  salt  mixture." 

The  creeper's  life  seems  as  quiet  as  his  colors. 
You  will  find  him  by  overhearing  his  note  some- 
where on  one  side  of  you  as  you  pass.  Now 
watch  him.  He  is  traveling  rather  quickly,  with 
an  alert,  business-like  air,  up  the  trunk  of  a  tree 
in  a  spiral  course,  hitching  along  inch  by  inch, 
hugging  the  bark,  and  every  little  while  stop- 
ping to  probe  a  crevice  of  it  with  his  long, 
curved,  sharply  pointed  bill.  He  is  in  search 
of  food,  —  insects'  eggs,  grubs,  and  what  not ; 
morsels  so  tiny  that  it  need  not  surprise  us  to  see 


THE  BROWN  CREEPER  11 

him  spending  the  whole  day  in  satisfying  his 
hunger. 

There  is  one  thing  to  be  said  for  such  a  life  : 
the  bird  is  never  without  something  to  take  up 
his  mind.  In  fact,  if  he  enjoys  the  pleasures  of 
the  table  half  as  well  as  some  human  beings  seem 
to  do,  his  life  ought  to  be  one  of  the  happiest 
imaginable. 

How  flat  and  thin  he  looks,  and  how  perfectly 
his  colors  blend  with  the  grays  and  browns  of 
the  mossy  bark !  No  wonder  it  is  easy  for  us  to 
pass  near  him  without  knowing  it.  We  under- 
stand now  what  learned  people  mean  when  they 
talk  about  the  "  protective  coloration  "  of  ani- 
mals. A  hawk  flying  overhead,  on  the  lookout 
for  game,  must  have  hard  work  to  see  this  bit 
of  a  bird  clinging  so  closely  to  the  bark  as  to  be 
almost  a  part  of  it. 

And  if  a  hawk  does  pass,  you  may  be  pretty 
sure  the  creeper  will  see  him,  and  will  flatten 
himself  still  more  tightly  against  the  tree  and 
stay  as  motionless  as  the  bark  itself.  He  needs 
neither  to  fight  nor  to  run  away.  His  strength, 
as  the  prophet  said,  is  to  sit  still. 

But  look  !  As  the  creeper  comes  to  the  upper 
part  of  the  tree,  where  the  bark  is  less  furrowed 
than  it  is  below,  and  therefore  less  likely  to  con- 
ceal the  scraps  of  provender  that  he  is  in  search 


12  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

of,  he  suddenly  lets  go  his  hold  and  flies  down 
to  the  foot  of  another  tree,  and  begins  again  to 
creep  upward.  If  you  keep  track  of  him,  you 
will  see  him  do  this  hour  after  hour.  He  never 
walks  down.  Up,  up,  he  goes,  and  if  you  look 
sharply  enough,  you  will  see  that  whenever  he 
pauses  he  makes  use  of  his  sharp,  stiff  tail- 
feathers  as  a  rest  —  a  kind  of  camp-stool,  as  it 
were,  or,  better  still,  a  bracket.  He  is  built  for 
his  work;  color,  bill,  feet,  tail-feathers  —  all 
were  made  on  purpose  for  him. 

He  is  a  native  of  the  northern  country,  and 
therefore  to  most  readers  of  this  book  he  is  a 
winter  bird  only.  If  you  know  his  voice,  you 
will  hear  him  twenty  times  for  once  that  you  see 
him.  If  you  know  neither  him  nor  his  voice,  it 
will  be  worth  your  while  to  make  his  acquaint- 
ance. 

When  you  come  upon  a  little  bunch  of  chick- 
adees flitting  through  the  woods,  listen  for  a 
quick,  lisping  note  that  is  something  like  theirs, 
but  different.  It  may  be  the  creeper's,  for  al- 
though he  seems  an  unsocial  fellow,  seldom  flock- 
ing with  birds  of  his  own  kind,  he  is  fond  of  the 
chickadee's  cheerful  companionship. 

To  see  him  and  hear  his  zeep,  you  would  never 
take  him  for  a  songster  ;  but  there  is  no  telling 
by  the  looks  of  a  bird  how  well  he  can  sing.  In 


BROWN   CREEPER 
I.  Male.     2.  Female 


THE  BROWN   CREEPER  13 

fact,  plainly  dressed  birds  are,  as  a  rule,  the  best 
musicians.  The  very  handsome  ones  have  no 
need  to  charm  with  the  voice.  And  our  modest 
little  creeper  has  a  song,  and  a  fairly  good  one  ; 
one  that  answers  his  purpose,  at  all  events,  al- 
though it  may  never  make  him  famous.  In 
springtime  it  may  be  heard  now  and  then  even 
in  a  place  like  Boston  Common  ;  but  of  course 
you  must  go  where  the  birds  pair  and  nest  if  you 
would  hear  them  at  their  finest-;  for  birds,  like 
other  people,  sing  best  when  they  feel  happiest. 

The  brown  creeper's  nest  used  to  be  something 
of  a  mystery.  It  was  sought  for  in  woodpeck- 
ers' holes.  Now  it  is  known  that  as  a  general 
thing  it  is  built  behind  a  scale  of  loose  bark  on 
a  dead  tree,  between  the  bark  and  the  trunk. 
Ordinarily,  if  not  always,  it  will  be  found  under  a 
flake  that  is  loose  at  the  bottom  instead  of  at  the 
top.  Into  such  a  place  the  female  bird  packs 
tightly  a  mass  of  twigs  and  strips  of  the  soft  in- 
ner bark  of  trees,  and  on  the  top  of  this  prepares 
her  nest  and  lays  her  eggs.  Her  mate  flits  to 
and  fro,  keeping  her  company,  and  once  in  a 
while  cheering  her  with  a  song,  but  so  far  as  has 
yet  been  discovered  he  takes  no  hand  in  the  work 
itself.  It  is  quite  possible  that  the  female,  who 
is  to  occupy  the  nest,  prefers  to  have  her  own 
way  in  the  construction  of  it. 


' 


14  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

After  the  young  ones  are  hatched,  at  all  events, 
the  father  bird's  behavior  leaves  nothing  to  be 
complained  of.  He  "  comes  to  time,"  as  we  say, 
in  the  most  loyal  manner.  In  and  out  of  the 
nest  he  and  the  mother  go,  feeding  their  hungry 
charges,  making  their  entry  and  exit  always  at 
the  same  point,  through  the  merest  crack  of  a 
door,  between  the  overhanging  bark  and  the  tree, 
just  above  the  nest.  It  is  a  very  pretty  bit  of 
family  life. 

It  would  be  hard  to  imagine  a  nest  better  con- 
cealed from  a  bird's  natural  enemies,  especially 
when,  as  is  often  the  case,  the  tree  stands  in 
water  on  the  edge  of  a  stream  or  lake.  And 
not  only  is  the  nest  wonderfully  well  hidden,  but 
it  is  perfectly  sheltered  from  rain,  as  it  would  not 
be  if  it  were  built  under  a  strip  of  bark  that  was 
peeled  from  above.  All  in  all,  we  must  respect 
the  simple,  demure-looking  creeper  as  a  very 
clever  architect. 


IV 

THE   BROWN   THRASHER 

THE  brown  thrasher  —  called  also  the  brown 
thrush  —  is  a  bird  considerably  longer  than  a 
robin,  with  a  noticeably  long  tail  and  a  long, 
curved  bill.  His  upper  parts  are  reddish  brown 
or  cinnamon  color,  and  his  lower  parts  white  or 
whitish,  boldly  streaked  with  black.  You  will 
find  him  in  hedgerows,  in  scrub-lands,  and  about 
the  edges  of  woods,  where  he  keeps  mostly  on  or 
near  the  ground.  His  general  manner  is  that  of 
a  creature  who  wishes  nothing  else  so  much  as  to 
escape  notice.  "  Only  let  me  alone,"  he  seems 
to  say.  If  he  sees  you  coming,  as  he  pretty  cer- 
tainly will,  he  dodges  into  the  nearest  thicket  or 
barberry-bush,  and  waits  for  you  to  pass. 

Farmers  know  him  as  the  "  planting-bird." 
In  New  England  he  makes  his  appearance  with 
commendable  punctuality  between  the  twentieth 
of  April  and  the  first  of  May ;  and  while  the 
farmer  is  planting  his  garden,  the  thrasher  en- 
courages him  with  song.  One  man,  who  was 
planting  beans,  imagined  that  the  bird  said, 


16  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

"  Drop  it,  drop  it !  Cover  it  up,  cover  it  up  !  " 
Perhaps  he  did.  It  was  good  advice,  anyhow. 

In  his  own  way  the  thrasher  is  one  of  the 
great  singers  of  the  world.  He  is  own  cousin  to 
the  famous  mockingbird,  and  at  the  South,  where 
he  and  the  mocker  may  be  heard  singing  side  by 
side,  —  and  so  much  alike  that  it  is  hard  to  tell 
one  from  the  other,  —  he  is  known  as  the  "  brown 
mocking-bird."  He  would  deserve  the  title  but 
for  one  thing  —  he  does  not  mock.  In  that  re- 
spect he  falls  far  short  of  his  gray  cousin,  who  not 
only  has  all  the  thrasher's  gift  of  original  song, 
but  a  most  amazing  faculty  of  imitation,  as  every 
one  knows  who  has  heard  even  a  caged  mocking- 
bird running  over  the  medley  of  notes  he  has 
picked  up  here  and  there  and  carefully  rehearsed 
and  remembered.  The  thrasher's  song  is  a  med- 
ley, but  not  a  medley  of  imitations. 

I  have  said  that  the  thrasher  keeps  near  the 
ground.  Such  is  his  habit ;  but  there  is  one 
exception.  When  he  sings  he  takes  the  very 
top  of  a  tree,  although  usually  it  is  not  a  tall 
one.  There  he  stands  by  the  half-hour  together, 
head  up  and  tail  down,  pouring  out  a  flood  of 
music ;  sounds  of  all  sorts,  high  notes  and  low 
notes,  smooth  notes  and  rough  notes,  all  jum- 
bled together  in  the  craziest  fashion,  as  if  the 
musician  were  really  beside  himself. 


BROWN  THRASHER 

/,  2, 3.  Males.     4.  Female 


THE  BROWN  THRASHER  17 

It  is  a  performance  worth  buying  a  ticket  for 
and  going  miles  to  hear ;  but  it  is  to  be  heard 
without  price  on  the  outskirts  of  almost  any  vil- 
lage in  the  United  States  east  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains  and  south  of  Maine.  You  must  go 
out  at  the  right  time,  however,  for  the  bird  sings 
but  a  few  weeks  in  the  year,  although  he  remains 
in  New  England  almost  six  months,  or  till  the 
middle  of  October.  He  is  one  of  the  birds  that 
every  one  should  know,  since  it  is  perfectly  easy 
to  identify  him  ;  and  once  known,  he  is  never  to 
be  forgotten,  or  to  be  confounded  with  anything 
else. 

The  thrasher's  nest  is  a  rude,  careless-looking 
structure,  made  of  twigs,  roots,  and  dry  leaves, 
and  is  to  be  looked  for  on  the  ground,  or  in  a 
bush  not  far  above  it.  Often  it  has  so  much  the 
appearance  of  a  last  year's  affair  that  one  is 
tempted  to  pass  it  as  unworthy  of  notice.  I  have 
been  fooled  in  that  way  more  than  once. 

The  bird  sits  close,  as  the  saying  is,  and  as 
she  stares  at  you  with  her  yellow  eyes,  full  at 
once  of  courage  and  fear,  you  will  need  a  hard 
heart  to  disturb  her.  Sometimes  she  will  really 
show  fight,  and  she  has  been  known  to  drive  a 
small  boy  off  the  field.  Her  whistle  after  she 
has  been  frightened  from  her  eggs  or  nestlings 
is  one  of  the  most  pathetic  sounds  in  nature.  I 


18  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

should  feel  sorry  for  the  boy  who  could  hear  it 
without  pity. 

Besides  this  mournful  whistle,  the  thrasher 
has  a  note  almost  exactly  like  a  smacking  kiss, 
—  very  realistic,  —  and  sometimes,  especially  at 
dusk,  an  uncanny,  ghostly  whisper,  that  seems 
meant  expressly  to  suggest  the  presence  of  some- 
thing unearthly  and  awful.  So  far  as  I  am 
aware,  there  is  no  other  bird-note  like  it.  I  have 
no  doubt  that  many  a  superstitious  person  has 
taken  to  his  heels  on  hearing  it  from  the  bushes 
along  a  lonesome  roadside  after  nightfall. 

Except  in  the  spring,  indeed,  there  is  little 
about  the  thrasher's  appearance  or  behavior  to 
suggest  pleasant  thoughts.  To  me,  at  any  rate, 
he  seems  a  creature  of  chronic  low  spirits.  The 
world  has  used  him  badly,  and  he  cannot  get 
over  it.  He  is  almost  the  only  bird  I  ever  see 
without  a  little  inspiration  of  cheerfulness.  Per- 
haps I  misjudge  him. 

Let  my  young  readers  make  his  acquaintance 
on  their  own  account,  if  they  have  not  already 
done  so,  and  find  him  a  livelier  creature  than  I 
have  described  him,  if  they  can. 


V 

THE   BUTCHER-BIRD 

"  BUTCHER-BIRD  "  is  not  a  very  pretty  name, 
but  it  is  expressive  and  appropriate,  and  so  is 
likely  to  stick  quite  as  long  as  the  more  bookish 
word  "  shrike/'  which  is  the  bird's  other  title. 
It  comes  from  its  owner's  habit  of  impaling1  the 
carcasses  of  its  prey  upon  thorns,  as  a  butcher 
hangs  upon  a  hook  the  body  of  a  pig  or  other 
animal  that  he  has  slaughtered. 

In  a  place  like  the  Public  Garden  of  Boston, 
if  a  shrike  happens  to  make  it  his  hunting-ground 
for  a  week  or  two,  you  may  find  here  and  there 
in  the  hawthorn-trees  the  body  of  a  mouse  or  the 
headless  trunk  of  an  English  sparrow  spitted  upon 
a  thorn.  Grasshoppers  are  said  to  be  treated 
in  a  similar  manner,  but  I  have  never  met  with 
the  bird's  work  in  the  grasshopper  season. 

The  shrike  commonly  seen  in  the  Northern 
States  is  a  native  of  the  far  north,  and  comes 
down  to  our  latitude  only  in  cold  weather.  He 
travels  singly,  and  if  he  finds  a  place  to  suit  him, 
a  place  where  the  living  is  good,  he  will  often 


20  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

remain    almost    in    the    same   spot   for   weeks 
together. 

In  size  and  appearance  he  resembles  the  mock- 
ingbird. His  colors  are  gray,  black,  and  white, 
his  tail  is  long,  and  his  bill  is  hooked  like  a 
hawk's. 

He  likes  a  perch  from  which  he  can  see  a  good 
distance  about  him.  A  telegraph  wire  answers 
his  purpose  very  well,  but  his  commonest  seat  is 
the  very  tip  of  a  tallish  tree.  If  you  look  across 
a  field  in  winter  and  descry  a  medium-sized  bird 
swaying  on  the  topmost  twig  of  a  lonesome  tree, 
balancing  himself  by  continual  tiltings  of  his 
long  tail,  you  may  set  him  down  as  most  likely 
a  butcher-bird. 

His  flight  is  generally  not  far  from  the  ground, 
but  as  he  draws  near  the  tree  in  which  he  means 
to  alight,  he  turns  suddenly  upward.  It  would 
be  surprising  to  see  him  alight  on  one  of  the 
lower  branches,  or  anywhere,  indeed,  except  at 
the  topmost  point. 

Small  birds  are  all  at  once  scarce  and  silent 
when  the  shrike  appears.  Sometimes  in  his 
hunger  he  will  attack  a  bird  heavier  than  him- 
self. I  had  once  stopped  to  look  at  a  flicker  in  a 
roadside  apple-tree,  when  I  suddenly  noticed  a 
butcher-bird  not  far  off.  At  the  same  moment, 
as  it  seemed,  the  butcher-bird  caught  sight  of  the 
flicker,  and  made  a  swoop  toward  him.  The 


THE  BUTCHER-BIRD  21 

flicker,  somewhat  to  my  surprise,  showed  no  sign 
of  panic,  or  even  of  fear.  He  simply  moved 
aside,  as  much  as  to  say,  "  Oh,  stop  that !  Don't 
bother  me ! "  How  the  affair  would  have  re- 
sulted, I  cannot  tell.  To  my  regret,  the  shrike  at 
that  moment  seemed  to  become  aware  of  a  man's 
presence,  and  flew  away,  leaving  the  woodpecker 
to  pursue  his  exploration  of  the  apple-tree  at  his 
leisure. 

The  shrike  has  a  very  curious  habit  of  singing, 
or  of  trying  to  sing,  in  the  disjointed  manner  of 
a  catbird.  I  have  many  times  heard  him  thus 
engaged,  and  can  bear  witness  that  some  of  his 
tones  are  really  musical.  Some  people  have  sup- 
posed that  at  such  times  he  is  trying  to  decoy 
small  birds,  but  to  me  the  performance  has  al« 
ways  seemed  like  music,  or  an  attempt  at  music^ 
rather  than  strategy. 

Southern  readers  may  be  presumed  to  be  fa- 
miliar with  another  shrike,  known  as  the  logger- 
head. As  I  have  seen  him  in  Florida  he  is  a  very 
tame,  unsuspicious  creature,  nesting  in  the  shade- 
trees  of  towns.  The  "  French  mocking-bird/'  a 
planter  told  me  he  was  called.  Mr.  Chapman 
has  seen  one  fly  fifty  yards  to  catch  a  grasshop- 
per which,  to  all  appearance,  he  had  sighted 
before  quitting  his  perch.  The  power  of  flight 
is  not  the  only  point  as  to  which  birds  have  the 
advantage  of  human  beings. 


VI 

THE    SCARLET    TANAGEB 

WHEN  I  began  to  learn  the  birds,  I  was  living 
in  a  large  city.  One  of  the  first  things  I  did, 
after  buying  a  book,  was  to  visit  a  cabinet  of 
mounted  specimens  —  "stuffed  birds,"  as  we 
often  call  them.  Such  a  wonderful  and  confus- 
ing variety  as  there  was  to  my  ignorant  eyes ! 
Among  them  I  remarked  especially  a  gorgeous 
scarlet  creature  with  black  wings  and  a  black  tail. 
It  was  labeled  the  scarlet  tanager.  So  far  as  I 
was  concerned,  it  could  not  have  looked  more 
foreign  if  it  had  come  from  Borneo.  My  book 
told  me  that  it  was  common  in  Massachusetts.  It 
might  be,  I  thought,  but  I  had  never  seen  it 
there.  And  a  bird  so  splendid  as  that !  Bright 
enough  to  set  the  woods  on  fire  !  How  could  I 
have  missed  it  ? 

Well,  there  came  a  Saturday,  with  its  half- 
holiday  for  clerks,  and  I  went  into  the  country, 
where  I  betook  myself  to  the  woods  of  my  native 
village,  the  woods  wherein  I  had  rambled  all  the 
years  of  my  boyhood.  And  that  afternoon,  be- 


SCARLET  TANAGER 
/.  Male.     2.  Female 


THE   SCARLET  TANAGER  23 

fore  I  came  out  of  them,  I  put  my  opera-glass  on 
two  of  those  wonderful  scarlet  and  black  birds. 
It  was  a  day  to  be  remembered. 

Since  that  time,  of  course,  I  have  seen  many 
like  them.  In  one  sense,  their  beauty  has  become 
to  me  an  old  story  ;  but  I  hope  that  I  have  set 
here  and  there  a  reader  on  a  hunt  that  has  been 
as  happily  rewarded  as  mine  was  on  that  bright 
summer  afternoon.  In  one  respect,  the  beginner 
has  a  great  advantage  over  an  old  hand.  He  has 
the  pleasure  of  more  excitement  and  surprise. 

The  bird  to  be  looked  for  is  a  little  longer  than 
a  bluebird,  of  a  superb  scarlet  color  except  for 
its  wings  and  tail,  which,  as  I  have  said,  are  jet- 
black.  I  speak  of  the  male  in  full  spring  costume. 
His  mate  does  not  show  so  much  as  a  red  feather, 
but  is  greenish  yellow,  or  yellowish  green,  with 
dark  —  not  black  —  wings  and  tail. 

You  may  see  the  tanager  once  in  a  while  in 
the  neighborhood  of  your  house,  if  the  grounds 
are  set  with  shade-trees,  but  for  the  most  part 
he  lives  in  woods,  especially  in  hard  woods  of  a 
fairly  old  growth. 

One  of  the  first  things  for  you  to  do,  with  him 
as  with  all  birds,  is  to  acquaint  yourself  with  his 
call-notes  and  his  song.  The  call  is  of  two  syl- 
lables, and  sounds  like  chip-chirr.  It  is  easily 
remembered  after  you  have  once  seen  the  bird  in 


24  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

the  act  of  uttering  it.  The  song  is  much  in  the 
manner  of  the  robin's,  but  less  smooth  and  flow- 
ing. I  have  often  thought,  and  sometimes  said, 
that  it  is  just  such  a  song  as  the  robin  might 
give  us  if  he  were  afflicted  with  what  people  call 
a  "  hoarse  cold."  The  bird  sings  as  if  his  whole 
heart  were  engaged,  but  at  the  same  time  in  a 
noticeably  broken  and  short-winded  style. 

The  oftener  you  hear  him,  the  easier  you  will 
find  it  to  distinguish  him  from  a  robin,  although 
at  first  you  may  find  yourself  badly  at  a  loss. 
A  boy  that  can  tell  any  one  of  twenty  playmates 
by  the  tones  of  his  voice  alone  will  need  nothing 
but  practice  and  attention  to  do  the  same  for  a 
great  part  of  the  sixty  or  seventy  kinds  of  com- 
mon birds  living  in  the  woods  and  fields  about 
him. 

The  tanager's  nest  is  built  in  a  tree,  on  the 
flat  of  a  level  branch,  so  to  speak,  generally 
toward  the  end.  Sometimes,  at  any  rate,  it  is  a 
surprisingly  loose,  carelessly  constructed  thing, 
through  the  bottom  of  which  one  can  see  the 
blue  or  bluish  eggs  while  standing  on  the  ground 
underneath. 

It  must  be  plain  to  any  one  that  the  mother 
bird,  in  her  dull  greenish  dress,  is  much  less 
easily  seen,  and  therefore  much  less  in  danger,  as 
she  sits  brooding,  than  she  would  be  if  she  wore 


THE  SCARLET  TANAGER  25 

the  flaming  scarlet  feathers  that  render  Iier  mate 
so  handsome. 

Southern  readers  will  know  also  another  kind 
of  tanager,  not  red  and  black,  but  red  all  over. 
He,  too,  is  a  great  beauty,  although  if  the  ques- 
tion were  left  to  me,  I  could  not  give  him  the 
palm  over  his  more  northern  relative.  The  red 
of  the  southern  bird  is  of  a  different  shade 
— " rose-red"  or  "vermilion,"  the  books  call 
it.  He  sings  like  the  scarlet  tanager,  but  in  a 
smoother  voice.  Although  he  is  a  red  bird,  he 
is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  southern  red- 
bird.  The  latter,  better  known  as  the  cardinal 
grosbeak,  is  a  thick-billed  bird  of  the  sparrow  and 
finch  family.  He  is  frequently  seen  in  cages, 
and  is  a  royal  whistler. 

The  scarlet  tanager  —  the  male  in  red  and 
black  plumage  —  is  not  to  be  mistaken  for  any- 
thing else  in  the  Eastern  States.  Once  see  him. 

O  ' 

and  you  will  always  know  him.  For  that  reason 
he  is  an  excellent  subject  for  the  beginner.  He 
passes  the  winter  in  Central  or  South  America, 
and  returns  to  New  England  in  the  second  week 
of  May.  He  makes  his  appearance  in  full  dress, 
but  later  in  the  season  changes  it  for  one  resem- 
bling pretty  closely  the  duller  plumage  of  his 
mate. 


VII 

THE   SONG   SPARROW 

SPARROWS  are  of  many  kinds,  and  in  a  gen- 
eral way  the  different  kinds  look  so  much  alike 
that  the  beginner  in  bird  study  is  apt  to  find 
them  confusing,  if  not  discouraging.  They  will 
try  his  patience,  no  matter  how  sharp  and  clever 
he  may  think  himself,  and  unless  he  is  much 
cleverer  than  the  common  run  of  humanity,  he 
will  make  a  good  many  mistakes  before  he  gets 
to  the  end  of  them. 

One  of  the  best  and  commonest  of  them  all  is 
the  song  sparrow.  His  upper  parts  are  mottled, 
of  course,  since  he  is  a  sparrow.  His  light- 
'colored  breast  is  sharply  streaked,  and  in  the 
middle  of  it  the  streaks  usually  run  together  and 
form  a  blotch.  His  outer  tail-feathers  are  not 
white,  and  there  is  no  yellow  on  the  wings  or 
about  the  head.  These  last  points  are  mentioned 
in  order  to  distinguish  him  from  two  other  spar- 
rows with  streaked  breasts  —  the  vesper  sparrow 
and  the  savanna. 

By  the  middle  of  March  song  sparrows  reach 


SONG   SPARROW 
/.  Male.     2.  Female 


THE   SONG   SPARROW  27 

New  England  in  crowds,  —  along  with  robins 
and  red-winged  blackbirds,  —  and  are  to  be 
heard  singing  on  all  hands,  especially  in  the 
neighborhood  of  water.  They  remain  until  late 
autumn,  and  here  and  there  one  will  be  found 
even  in  midwinter. 

The  song,  for  which  this  sparrow  is  particu- 
larly distinguished,  is  a  bright  and  lively  strain, 
nothing  very  great  in  itself,  perhaps,  but  thrice 
welcome  for  being  heard  so  early  in  the  season, 
when  the  ear  is  hungry  after  the  long  winter 
silence.  Its  chief  distinction,  however,  is  its 
amazing  variety.  Not  only  do  no  two  birds  sing 
precisely  alike,  but  the  same  bird  sings  many 
tunes. 

Of  this  latter  fact,  which  I  have  known  some 
excellent  people  to  be  skeptical  about,  you  can 
readily  satisfy  yourself,  —  and  there  is  nothing 
like  knowing  a  thing  at  first  hand,  —  if  you  will 
take  the  pains  to  keep  a  singer  under  your  eye 
at  the  height  of  the  musical  season.  You  will 
find  that  he  repeats  one  strain  for  perhaps  a 
dozen  times,  without  the  change  of  a  note ;  then 
suddenly  he  comes  out  with  a  song  entirely  dif- 
ferent. This  second  song  he  will  in  turn  drop 
for  a  third,  and  so  on.  The  bird  acts,  for  all  the 
world,  as  if  he  were  singing  hymns,  of  so  many 
verses  each,  one  after  another. 


28  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

It  is  really  a  wonderful  performance.  There 
are  very  few  kinds  of  birds  that  do  anything  like 
it.  Of  itself  it  is  enough  to  make  the  song  spar- 
row famous,  and  it  is  well  worth  any  one's  while 
to  hear  it  and  see  it  done.  Nobody  can  see  it 
without  believing  that  birds  have  a  true  appre- 
ciation of  music.  They  are  better  off  than  some 
human  beings,  at  all  events.  They  know  one 
tune  from  another. 

A  lady  correspondent  was  good  enough  to 
send  me,  not  long  ago,  a  pleasing  account  of  the 
doings  of  a  pair  of  song  sparrows,  which,  as  she 
says,  came  to  her  for  six  seasons. 

"  One  year,"  she  writes,  "  they  happened  to 
build  where  I  could  watch  them  from  the  win- 
dow, and  they  did  a  very  curious  thing.  They 
fed  the  little  birds  with  all  sorts  of  worms  of  dif- 
ferent colors  until  they  were  ready  to  leave  the 
nest ;  then  the  male  brought  a  pure  white  moth 
and  held  it  near  the  nest,  which  was  in  some 
stems  of  a  rosebush  a  few  inches  from  the 
ground,  on  a  level  with  the  lower  rail  of  a  picket 
fence. 

"  One  of  the  little  birds  came  out  of  the  nest 
at  once  and  followed  its  parent,  who  went  side- 
wise,  always  holding  the  dazzling  white  morsel 
just  out  of  the  youngster's  reach.  In  this  man- 
ner they  crossed  the  lane,  climbed  the  inclined 


THE  SONG  SPARROW  29 

plane  of  a  woodpile,  and  passed  through  a  fence 
and  across  a  vegetable  garden  into  an  asparagus 
bed,  in  which  miniature  forest  the  little  traveler 
received  and  ate  the  moth. 

"  Another  nest  was  built  on  the  bank  of  a 
brook  on  the  farther  side  of  a  road.  Out  of 
this  nest  I  saw  two  little  fellows  coaxed  with 
these  snow-white  moths,  and  led  across  the  dusty 
road  into  a  hedge." 

One  or  two  experiences  of  this  kind  are  suffi- 
cient reward  for  a  good  deal  of  patient  obser- 
vation. The  singer  of  this  pair  of  birds,  my 
correspondent  says,  had  ten  distinct  songs,  one 
of  them  exceedingly  beautiful  and  peculiar. 

The  song  sparrow's  nest  is  usually  built  on 
the  ground,  and  the  bird  is  one  of  several  kinds 
that  are  known  indiscriminately  by  country 
people  as  ground  sparrows. 

Song  sparrows  seem  to  be  of  a  pretty  nervous 
disposition,  to  judge  from  their  behavior.  One 
of  their  noticeable  characteristics  is  a  twitching, 
up-and-down,  "  pumping  "  motion  of  the  tail,  as 
they  dash  into  cover  on  being  disturbed. 

People  who  live  in  the  Southern  States  see 
these  birds  only  in  the  cooler  part  of  the  year, 
but  must  have  abundant  opportunity  to  hear 
them  sing  as  spring  approaches. 


VIII 

THE    FIELD    SPARROW   AND    THE   CHIPPER 

ALL  beginners  in  bird  study  find  the  sparrow 
family  a  hard  one.  There  are  so  many  kinds 
of  sparrows,  and  the  different  kinds  look  so  con- 
fusingly  alike.  How  shall  I  ever  be  able  to  tell 
them  apart  ?  the  novice  says  to  himself. 

Well,  there  is  no  royal  road  to  such  learning, 
it  may  as  well  be  confessed.  But  there  is  a  road, 
for  all  that,  and  a  pretty  good  one,  —  the  road 
of  patience ;  and  there  is  much  pleasure  to  be 
had  in  following  it.  If  you  know  one  sparrow, 
be  it  only  the  so-called  "  English/'  you  have 
made  a  beginning. 

If  you  know  the  English  sparrow,  I  say  ;  for, 
strange  as  it  may  seem,  I  find  numbers  of  peo- 
ple who  do  not.  Take  the  average  inhabitant 
of  any  of  our  large  cities  into  the  country,  and 
let  him  come  upon  an  English  sparrow  in  a  way- 
side hedge,  and  there  are  three  chances  to  one 
that  he  will  not  know  with  certainty  what  to 
call  it.  Quite  as  likely  as  not  he  has  never 
noticed  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  English  spar- 


THE  FIELD   SPARROW  AND  THE  CHIPPER    31 

rows,  very  differently  feathered  —  the  male  and 
the  female. 

In  a  short  chapter  like  this  I  am  not  going  to 
attempt  a  miracle.  If  you  read  it  to  the  end, 
never  so  carefully,  you  will  not  be  prepared  to 
name  all  the  sparrows  at  sight.  As  I  said  be- 
fore, they  are  a  hard  set.  My  wish  now  is  to 
speak  of  two  of  the  smallest  and  commonest. 

One  of  these  is  called  sometimes  the  chipping 
sparrow,  sometimes  the  chipper,  and  sometimes 
—  much  less  often  —  the  doorstep  sparrow.  Per- 
sonally, I  like  the  last  name  best,  —  perhaps  be- 
cause I  invented  it.  Scientific  men,  who  prefer 
for  excellent  reasons  to  have  their  own  names 
for  things,  call  him  Spizella  socialis  —  that  is  to 
say,  the  familiar  or  social  little  spiza,  or  sparrow. 
The  idea  of  littleness,  some  young  readers  may 
not  know,  is  contained  in  the  termination  ella, 
which  is  what  grammarians  call  a  diminutive. 
Umbrella,  for  instance,  is  literally  a  small  umbra, 
or  shade. 

With  most  readers  of  this  book  the  chipping 
sparrow  is  a  bird  of  spring,  summer,  and  autumn. 
For  the  winter  he  retires  to  our  extreme  South- 
ern States  and  to  Mexico.  If  you  live  in  Massa- 
chusetts, you  may  begin  to  be  on  the  watch  for 
him  by  the  5th  of  April.  If  your  home  is  farther 
south,  you  should  see  him  somewhat  earlier. 


32  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

Perhaps  you  will  know  him  by  this  brief  de- 
scription :  a  very  small,  slender  sparrow,  with  a 
dark  chestnut-red  crown,  a  black  forehead,  a 
black  bill,  and  plain  —  unstreaked  and  unspotted 
—  under  parts. 

His  ordinary  note,  or  call,  is  a  chip  (whence 
his  name),  and  his  song  is  a  very  dry,  tuneless, 
monotonous,  long-drawn  chippy -chippy-chippy, 
uttered  so  fast  as  to  sound  almost  like  a  trill. 
You  may  like  the  bird  never  so  well,  but  if  you 
have  any  idea  of  music,  you  will  never  call  him  a 
fine  singer.  What  he  and  his  mate  think  about 
the  matter  there  is,  of  course,  no  telling.  He 
seems  to  be  very  much  in  earnest,  at  all  events. 

He  is  a  social  bird,  I  say.  You  will  not  have 
to  go  far  afield  or  into  the  woods  in  search  of 
him.  If  you  live  in  any  sort  of  country  place, 
with  a  bit  of  garden  and  a  few  shrubs  and  fruit 
trees,  a  pair  of  chippers  will  be  likely  to  find  you 
out.  Their  nest  will  be  built  in  a  tree  or  bush, 
a  small  structure  neatly  lined  with  hair,  and  in 
due  time  it  will  contain  four  or  five  eggs,  blue 
or  greenish  blue,  with  brown  spots. 

Our  other  bird  is  of  the  chipper's  size,  and, 
like  him,  has  unstreaked  and  unspotted  lower 
parts.  His  bill  is  of  a  light  color,  "  reddish 
brown,"  one  book  says,  "  pale  reddish,"  says  an- 
other. This  is  one  of  the  principal  marks  for 


THE  FIELD   SPARROW  AND  THE  CHIPPER    33 

the  beginner  to  notice.  Another  is  a  wash  of 
buff,  or  yellowish  brown,  on  the  sides  of  the 
breast.  The  upper  parts,  too,  are  in  general 
much  lighter  than  the  chipper's. 

You  will  not  be  likely  often  to  find  this  bird 
in  your  garden  or  about  the  lawn.  He  is  called 
the  field  sparrow,  but  he  lives  mostly  in  dry  old 
pastures,  partly  overgrown  with  bushes  and  trees. 
His  nest  is  placed  on  the  ground,  or  in  a  low 
bush,  and  is  often  lined  wholly  or  in  part  with 
hair.  He  and  the  chipper  belong  to  what  is 
called  the  same  genus.  That  is  to  say,  the  two 
are  so  nearly  related  that  they  have  the  same 
surname.  The  chipper  is  Spizella  socialis,  the 
field  sparrow  is  Spizella  pusilla ;  just  as  two 
brothers  will  have  one  name  in  common,  say, 
Jones,  William,  and  Jones,  Andrew. 

The  chipper  is  a  favorite  on  account  of  his 
familiar,  friendly  ways.  The  field  sparrow  de- 
serves to  be  known  and  loved  for  his  music. 
Few  birds  sing  better,  in  my  opinion,  though 
many  make  more  display  and  are  more  talked 
about.  The  beauty  of  the  song  is  in  its  sweet- 
ness, simplicity,  and  perfect  taste.  It  begins 
with  three  or  four  longer  notes,  which  run  at 
once  into  quicker  and  shorter  ones,  either  on  the 
same  pitch  or  a  little  higher.  Eeally  the  strain 
is  almost  too  simple  to  make  a  description  of :  a 


34  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

simple  line  of  pure  melody,  one  may  say.  You 
must  hear  it  for  yourself.  Sometimes  the  bird 
gives  it  out  double,  so  to  speak,  catching  it  up 
again  just  as  he  seems  ready  to  finish.  The  tone 
is  the  clearest  of  whistles,  and  the  whole  effect  is 
most  delightful  and  soothing.  It  is  worth  any- 
body's while  to  spend  a  season  or  two  in  bird 
study,  if  only  to  learn  this  and  half  a  dozen  more 
pieces  of  our  common  wild-bird  music. 

The  field  sparrow's  times  of  arrival  and  depar- 
ture are  practically  the  same  as  the  chipper' s. 
Neither  bird  is  hard  to  see,  or  very  hard  to  dis- 
tinguish ;  a  bit  of  patience  and  an  opera-glass 
will  do  the  business ;  though  you  may  have  to 
puzzle  awhile  over  either  of  them  before  making 
quite  sure  of  your  knowledge.  In  bird  study,  as 
in  any  other,  we  learn  by  correcting  our  own 
mistakes. 


IX 

SOME    APRIL    SPARROWS 

FOR  the  first  three  weeks  of  April  the  ornithol- 
ogist goes  comparatively  seldom  into  the  woods. 
Millions  of  birds  have  come  up  from  the  South, 
but  the  forest  is  still  almost  deserted.  May,  with 
its  hosts  of  warblers,  will  bring  a  grand  change 
in  this  respect;  meanwhile  the  sparrows  are  in 
the  ascendant,  and  we  shall  do  well  to  follow  the 
road  for  the  most  part,  though  with  frequent 
excursions  across  fields  and  into  gardens  and  or- 
chards. Of  eighty-four  species  of  birds  seen  by 
me  in  April,  a  year  ago,  twenty-one  were  water 
birds,  and  of  the  remaining  sixty-three,  twenty, 
or  almost  one  third,  were  members  of  the  spar- 
row family,  while  only  five  were  warblers.  In 
May,  on  the  other  hand,  out  of  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  species  seen  twenty-three  were  war- 
blers, and  only  eighteen  were  sparrows.  To  re- 
present the  case  fairly,  however,  the  comparison 
should  be  by  individuals  rather  than  by  species, 
and  for  such  a  comparison  I  have  no  adequate 
data.  My  own  opinion  is  that  of  all  the  birds 


36  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

commonly  seen  in  April,  more  than  half,  perhaps 
as  many  as  four  fifths,  are  members  of  the  spar- 
row family.  There  are  days,  indeed,  when  the 
song  sparrows  alone  seem  to  outnumber  all  other 
birds,  and  other  days  when  the  same  is  true  of 
the  snowbirds. 

The  large  and  noble  sparrow  family,  which 
includes  not  only  the  sparrows,  commonly  so 
called,  but  finches,  grosbeaks,  crossbills,  snow- 
birds, buntings,  and  the  like,  is  represented  in 
North  America  by  more  than  ninety  species,  and 
in  Massachusetts  by  about  forty.  It  is  preem- 
inently a  musical  family,  and,  with  us  at  least, 
April  is  the  best  month  of  the  twelve  in  which 
to  appreciate  its  lyrical  efforts,  notwithstanding 
the  fact  that  one  of  its  most  distinguished  song- 
sters, the  rose-breasted  grosbeak,  is  still  absent. 

Among  the  more  gifted  of  its  April  represent- 
atives are  the  fox  sparrow,  —  so  named  from  his 
color,  —  the  purple  finch,  the  song  sparrow,  the 
vesper  sparrow,  the  tree  sparrow,  the  field  spar- 
row, and  the  white-throated  sparrow  —  seven 
common  birds,  every  one  of  them  deserving  to 
be  known  by  any  who  care  for  sweet  sounds. 

One  of  the  seven,  the  purple  finch,  also  called 
the  linnet,  is  unlike  all  the  others,  and  easily 
excels  them  all  in  the  fluency  and  copiousness 
of  his  music.  He  is  readily  distinguishable  —  in 


SOME  APRIL  SPARROWS  37 

adult  male  plumage  —  as  a  sparrow  whose  head 
and  neck  appear  to  have  been  dipped  in  carmine 
ink,  or  perhaps  in  pokeberry  juice.  His  song  is 
a  prolonged,  rapid,  unbroken  warble,  which  he 
is  much  given  to  delivering  while  on  the  wing, 
hovering  ecstatically  and  singing  as  if  he  would 
pour  out  his  very  soul.  He  is  a  familiar  bird,  a 
lover  of  orchards  and  roadside  trees,  but  is  not 
so  universally  distributed,  probably,  as  most  of 
the  other  species  I  have  named. 

In  contrast  with  the  purple  finch,  all  the  six 
sparrows  here  mentioned  with  him  have  brief  and 
rather  formal  songs.  Those  of  the  fox  sparrow 
and  the  tree  sparrow  bear  a  pretty  strong  resem- 
blance to  each  other,  especially  as  to  cadence  or 
inflection ;  the  song  sparrow's  and  the  vesper 
sparrow's  are  still  more  closely  alike,  and  will 
almost  certainly  confuse  the  novice,  while  those 
of  the  field  sparrow  and  the  white-throat  are  each 
quite  unique. 

The  fox  sparrow  visits  Massachusetts  as -a 
migrant  only,  and  the  same  might  be  said  of  the 
white-throat,  only  that  it  breeds  in  Berkshire 
County  and  single  birds  are  often  seen  in  the 
eastern  part  of  the  State  during  the  winter.  The 
tree  sparrow  is  a  winter  resident,  going  far  north 
to  rear  its  young,  and  the  remaining  four  species 
are  with  us  for  the  summer. 


38  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

The  fox  sparrow  is  to  be  heard  from  the  20th 
of  March  (I  speak  roughly)  to  the  middle  of  April. 
In  respect  to  voice  and  cadence,  he  is  to  me  the 
finest  of  our  sparrows  proper,  though  I  do  not 
think  him  so  finished  an  artist  as  the  song  and 
vesper  sparrows.  He  may  be  recognized  by  his 
superior  size  and  his  bright  rusty-red  (reddish 
brown)  color.  Indeed,  these  two  features  give 
him  at  first  sight  the  appearance  of  a  thrush.  He 
is  one  of  the  sparrows  —  like  the  song,  the  vesper, 
the  savanna,  and  the  Ipswich  —  which  are  thickly 
streaked  upon  the  breast. 

The  tree  sparrow  passes  the  winter  with  us,  as 
I  have  said,  but  abounds  only  during  the  two 
migrations.  He  is  in  full  song  for  the  greater 
part  of  April.  His  distinctive  marks  are  a  bright 
reddish  ("  chestnut ")  crown,  conspicuous  white 
wing-bars,  and  an  obscure  round  blotch  in  the 
middle  of  his  unstreaked  breast. 

The  white-throat,  commonly  a  very  abundant 
migrant,  arrives  about  the  20th  of  April  and  re- 
mains till  about  the  middle  of  May.  His  loud, 
clear  song  is  remarkable  for  its  peculiar  and 
strongly  marked  rhythm.  It  consists  of  two  com- 
paratively long  introductory  notes,  followed  by 
three  sets  of  triplets  in  monotone  —  like  see,  see, 
pedbody,  pedbody,  pedbody.  This  bird,  too, 
perplexing  as  the  sparrows  are  usually  thought 


SOME  APRIL  SPARROWS  39 

to  be,  is  perfectly  well  marked,  with  a  white 
throat  (not  merely  a  white  chin,  as  in  the  swamp 
sparrow)  and  a  broad  white  stripe  on  each  side 
of  the  crown,  turning  to  yellow  in  front  of  the 
eyes.  The  crown  itself  is  dark,  with  a  white  line 
through  the  middle,  and  each  wing  is  adorned 
with  two  white  bars.  In  size  the  white-throat 
comes  next  to  the  fox  sparrow. 

The  song  sparrow  and  the  vesper  sparrow  not 
only  sing  alike,  but  look  alike.  The  latter  may 
be  told  at  once,  however,  by  his  white  outer  tail 
feathers,  which  show  as  he  flies.  These  are  two 
of  our  commonest  and  worthiest  birds.  The  ves- 
per sparrow,  more  generally  known,  perhaps,  as 
the  bay-winged  bunting,  likes  a  drier  field  than 
the  song  sparrow,  and  is  especially  noticeable  for 
his  trick  of  running  along  the  path  or  the  road 
directly  in  front  of  the  traveler. 


THE    ROSE-BREASTED    GROSBEAK 

THERE  is  never  a  May  passes,  of  recent  years, 
but  some  one  comes  to  me,  or  writes  to  me,  to 
inquire  about  a  wonderfully  beautiful  bird  that 
he  has  just  seen  for  the  first  time.  He  does 
hope  I  can  tell  him  what  it  is.  It  is  a  pretty 
large  bird,  he  goes  on  to  say,  — but  not  so  long 
as  a  robin,  he  thinks,  if  I  question  him,  —  mostly 
black  and  white,  but  with  such  a  splendid  rosy 
patch  on  his  breast  or  throat !  What  can  it  be  ? 
He  had  no  idea  that  anything  so  handsome  was 
ever  to  be  seen  in  these  parts. 

If  all  the  questions  that  people  ask  about 
birds  were  as  easily  answered  as  this  one,  I  should 
be  thankful.  It  is  a  rose-breasted  grosbeak,  I 
tell  the  inquirer.  Perhaps  he  noticed  that  its  bill 
was  uncommonly  stout.  If  he  did,  the  fact  is 
exceptional,  for  somehow  the  shape  of  the  bill  is 
a  point  which  the  average  person  seems  very  sel- 
dom to  notice,  although  it  is  highly  important. 
Anyhow,  the  rosebreast's  beak  is  most  decidedly 
"  gross."  And  he  is  every  whit  as  beautiful  as 


ROSE-BREASTED    GROSBEAK 
/.  Males.     2.  Female,    J.    Young  Male 


THE  ROSE-BREASTED  GROSBEAK  41 

my  inquirer  represents  him  to  be.  In  that  re- 
spect he  ranks  with  the  oriole  and  the  scarlet 
tanager. 

He  is  distinguished  also  for  his  song,  which  is 
a  flowing  warble,  wonderfully  smooth  and  sweet. 
To  most  ears  it  bears  a  likeness  to  the  robin's 
song,  but  it  is  beyond  comparison  more  fluent  and 
delicious,  although  not  more  hearty.  Keep  your 
ear  open  for  such  a  voice,  —  by  the  middle  of 
May  if  you  live  in  New  England,  a  little  earlier 
if  your  home  is  farther  south,  —  and  you  will  be 
likely  to  hear  it ;  for  at  that  time  the  bird  is  not 
only  common,  but  a  very  free  singer. 

In  addition  to  his  song,  the  rosebreast  has 
a  short  call-note,  which  sounds  very  much  like 
the  squeak  of  a  pair  of  rusty  shears  —  a  kind 
of  hie,  which  you  will  find  no  difficulty  about 
remembering  if  you  have  once  learned  it.  His 
nest  is  generally  built  in  a  bush,  often  within 
reach  of  the  hand,  but  I  have  seen  it  well  up  in 
a  rather  tall  tree.  The  two  birds  spell  each 
other  in  brooding,  and  are  not  only  mutually 
affectionate,  but  very  brave.  I  have  known  the 
mother  bird  to  keep  her  seat  even  when  I  took 
hold  of  the  bush  below  the  nest  and  drew  her 
almost  against  my  face.  She,  by  the  way,  is 
a  very  modestly  dressed  body,  being  not  only 
without  the  rose-color,  but  without  the  clear 


42  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

contrast  of  black  and  white.  To  look  at  her, 
you  might  take  her  for  a  large  sparrow. 

The  rose-color  of  the  male,  it  should  be  said, 
is  not  confined  to  the  patch  on  the  breast,  but  is 
found  also  on  the  lining  of  the  wings>  where  it 
is  mostly  unnoticed  by  the  world,  but  where  his 
mate,  of  course,  cannot  help  admiring  it  as  he 
flutters  about  her ;  for  it  is  certain  that  female 
birds  have  a  good  eye  for  color,  and  believe  that 
fine  feathers  help,  at  least,  to  make  fine  birds. 
The  shade  is  of  the  brightest  and  most  exquisite, 
and  the  total  effect  of  the  male's  plumage  —  jet 
black,  pure  white,  and  vivid  rose-red  —  is  quite 
beyond  praise. 

The  birds,  happily,  are  not  shy,  and  prefer 
a  fairly  open  or  broken  country  rather  than  a 
dense  wood.  Last  season  one  sang  day  after 
day  directly  under  my  windows,  and  undoubt- 
edly had  a  mate  and  a  nest  somewhere  close  by. 
The  male,  it  should  be  added,  has  the  very 
pretty  though  dangerous-seeming  habit  of  sing- 
ing as  he  sits  upon  the  eggs. 


XI 

THE   BLUE   JAY 

SOME  years  ago,  as  the  story  comes  to  me,  two 
collectors  of  birds  met  by  accident  in  South 
America,  one  of  them  from  Europe,  the  other 
from  the  United  States.  "  There  is  one  bird  that 
I  would  rather  see  than  any  other  in  the  world," 
said  the  European.  "  It  is  the  handsomest  of 
all  the  birds  that  fly,  to  my  thinking,  although 
I  know  it  only  in  the  cabinet.  You  have  it  in 
North  America,  but  I  suppose  you  do  not  often 
see  it.  I  mean  the  blue  jay." 

What  the  American  answered  in  words,  I  do 
not  know;  but  I  am  pretty  confident  that  he 
smiled.  The  European  might  almost  as  well 
have  said  that  he  supposed  Boston  people  did 
not  often  see  an  English  sparrow.  Not  that  the 
blue  jay  swarms  everywhere  as  the  foreign  spar- 
row swarms  in  our  American  cities  ;  but  it  is  so 
common,  so  noisy,  so  conspicuous,  and  so  unmis- 
takable, that  it  is,  or  ought  to  be,  almost  an 
everyday  sight  to  all  country  dwellers. 

Strange  as   it  seems,  however,  I  find  many 


44  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

people  who  do  not  know  the  jay  when  they  see 
it.  In  late  winter,  say  toward  the  end  of  Febru- 
ary, when  I  begin  to  be  on  the  lookout  for  the 
first  bluebird  of  the  year,  I  am  all  but  certain  to 
have  word  brought  to  me  by  some  one  of  the 
village  school-teachers  that  bluebirds  have  al- 
ready come.  Johnny  This  or  Jimmy  That  saw 
one  near  his  house  several  weeks  ago !  That 
"  several  weeks  ago  "  makes  me  suspicious,  and 
on  following  up  the  matter  I  discover  that  John 
and  James  have  seen  a  large  blue  bird,  larger 
than  a  robin,  with  some  black  and  white  on  him 
—  all  white  underneath  —  and  wearing  a  tall 
crest  or  topknot.  Then  I  know  that  they  have 
mistaken  a  blue  bird  for  a  bluebird.  They  have 
seen  a  blue  jay,  a  bird  of  a  very  different  feather. 
He  has  been  with  us  all  winter,  as  he  always  is, 
and  has  been  in  sight  from  my  windows  daily. 
So  easy  is  it  for  boys  and  men  to  guess  at  things, 
and  guess  wrong. 

The  jay  is  a  relative  of  the  crow,  and  has 
much  of  the  crow's  cleverness,  with  more  than 
the  crow's  beauty.  Like  the  crow,  if  he  has  an 
errand  near  houses,  he  makes  a  point  of  doing  it 
in  the  early  morning  before  the  folks  who  live 
in  the  houses  have  begun  to  stir  about.  In  fact, 
he  knows  us,  in  some  respects  at  least,  better 
than  we  know  him,  and  habitually  takes  advan- 


THE  BLUE  JAY  45 

tage  of  what  no  doubt  seems  to  him  a  custom  of 
very  late  rising  on  the  part  of  human  beings. 

Among  small  birds  of  all  sorts  he  bears  a  de- 
cidedly bad  name.  In  nesting  time  you  may 
hear  them  uttering  a  chorus  of  loud  and  bitter 
laments  as  often  as  he  appears  among  them. 
Their  eggs  and  young  are  in  danger,  and  they 
join  forces  to  worry  him  and  drive  him  away. 
One  bird  sounds  the  alarm,  another  hears  him 
and  hastens  to  see  what  is  going  on,  and  in  a 
few  minutes  the  whole  neighborhood  is  awake. 
And  it  stays  awake  till  the  jay  moves  off.  After 
that  piece  of  evidence,  you  do  not  need  to  see 
him  doing  mischief.  The  little  birds'  behavior 
is  sufficiently  convincing.  As  Thoreau  said,  the 
presence  of  a  trout  in  the  milk  is  something  like 
proof. 

And  jays,  in  their  turn,  club  together  against 
enemies  larger  than  themselves.  Last  autumn 
I  was  walking  through  the  woods  with  a  friend, 
—  a  city  schoolmaster  eager  for  knowledge,  as 
every  schoolmaster  ought  to  be,  —  when  we  heard 
a  great  screaming  of  blue  jays  from  a  swampy 
thicket  on  our  right  hand. 

"  Now  what  do  you  suppose  the  birds  mean 
by  all  that  outcry  ?  "  said  my  friend. 

I  answered  that  very  likely  there  was  a  hawk 
or  an  owl  there. 


46  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

"  Let 's  go  and  see/'  said  the  master,  and  we 
turned  in  that  direction.  Sure  enough,  we  soon 
came  face  to  face  with  a  large  hen-hawk  perched 
in  one  of  the  trees,  while  the  jays,  one  after 
another,  were  dashing  as  near  him  as  they  dared, 
yelling  at  him  as  they  passed. 

At  our  nearer  approach  the  hawk  took  wing ; 
then  the  jays  disappeared,  and  silence  fell  upon 
the  woods.  And  I  dare  say  the  schoolmaster 
gave  me  credit  for  being  a  wondrously  wise  man ! 

The  jay  has  many  notes,  and  once  in  a  great 
while  may  even  be  heard  indulging  in  something 
like  a  warble.  One  of  his  most  musical  calls 
sounds  to  my  ears  a  little  like  the  word  "  lily." 

He  seems  to  be  very  fond  of  acorns,  and  is 
frequently  to  be  seen  standing  upon  a  limb, 
holding  an  acorn  under  his  claw  and  hammering 
it  to  pieces  with  all  the  force  of  his  stout  bill. 
When  angered,  he  scolds  violently,  bobbing  up 
and  down  in  a  most  ridiculous  manner.  In  fact, 
he  is  of  a  highly  nervous  temperament,  and  as 
full  of  gesticulations  as  a  Frenchman. 

To  me  he  is  especially  a  bird  of  autumn.  At 
that  season  the  woods  are  loud  with  his  clarion, 
and  as  I  listen  to  it  I  can  often  feel  myself  a 
boy  again,  rambling  in  the  woods  that  knew  me 
in  my  school-days.  With  all  his  faults  —  his  ill 
treatment  of  small  birds,  I  mean  —  I  should  be 
sorry  to  have  his  numbers  greatly  diminished. 


XII 

THE    KINGBIRD 

As  a  very  small  boy  I  spent  much  time  in  a 
certain  piece  of  rather  low  ground  partly  grown 
up  to  bushes.  Here  in  early  spring  I  picked 
bunches  of  pretty  pink  and  white  flowers,  which 
I  now  know  to  have  been  anemones.  In  the 
same  place,  a  month  or  two  later,  I  gathered 
splendid  red  lilies,  and  admired,  without  gather- 
ing it,  a  tiny  blue  flower  with  a  yellow  centre. 
This  would  not  bear  taking  home,  but  was  al- 
ways an  attraction  to  me.  I  should  have  liked 
it  better  still,  I  am  sure,  if  some  one  had  been 
kind  enough  to  tell  me  its  pretty  name  —  blue- 
eyed  grass. 

Here,  also,  I  picked  the  first  strawberries  of 
the  season  and  the  first  blueberries.  They  were 
luxuries  indeed.  A  "  gill-cup  "  full  of  either  of 
them  was  good  pay  for  an  hour's  search. 

In  one  corner  of  the  place  there  were  half  a 
dozen  or  so  of  apple-trees,  and  on  the  topmost 
branches  of  these  there  used  to  perch  continually 
two  or  three  birds  of  a  kind  which  some  older 


48  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

boy  told  me  were  kingbirds.  At  these  my  bro- 
ther and  I  —  both  of  us  small  enough  to  be  ex- 
cusable for  such  mischief  —  were  in  the  habit  of 
throwing  green  apples ;  partly  to  see  how  near 
we  could  come  to  hitting  them,  partly  for  the 
fun  of  watching  them  rise  into  the  air,  circle 
about  with  sharp  cries,  and  then  settle  back  upon 
the  perches  they  had  left.  Sometimes  we  stuck 
the  half -grown  apple  on  the  end  of  a  stick,  swung 
the  stick  round  our  heads,  and  sent  the  apple 
flying  to  a  tremendous  distance.  Stick  or  no 
stick,  however,  we  were  in  no  danger  of  killing 
anything,  as  I  am  glad  now  to  remember. 

What  amazed  us  was  that  the  birds  did  not  go 
away.  No  matter  how  long  we  "  appled  "  them, 
they  were  certain  to  be  on  hand  the  next  day  in 
the  same  place.  We  must  have  been  very  young 
and  very  green,  —  greener  even  than  the  apples, 

—  for  it  never  occurred  to  us  that  the  birds  had 
nests  in  the  trees,  and  for  that  reason  were  not 
to  be  driven  away  by  our  petty  persecutions. 

Even  then  I  noticed  the  peculiar  flight  of  the 
birds  —  the  short,  quick  strokes  of  their  wings, 
and  their  habit  of  hovering.  These  are  among 
the  signs  by  which  the  kingbird  can  be  recog- 
nized a  long  way  off.  He  is  dark-colored  above, 

—  almost  black,  —  pure  white  underneath,  and 
his  tail,  when  outspread,  shows  a  broad  white 


THE  KINGBIRD  49 

border  at  the  tip.  On  his  crown  is  an  orange- 
red  patch,  but  you  will  probably  never  see  it 
unless  you  have  the  bird  in  your  hand  and  brush 
apart  the  feathers  in  search  of  it. 

The  kingbird's  Latin  name  has  much  the  same 
meaning  as  his  common  English  one.  Tyrannus 
tyrannus  he  is  called  by  scientific  people.  He 
belongs  to  a  family  known  as  flycatchers,  birds 
that  catch  insects  on  the  wing.  That  is  the  rea- 
son why  the  kingbird  likes  a  perch  at  the  tip  of 
something,  so  that  he  can  dart  out  after  a  pass- 
ing insect,  catch  it,  and  return  to  his  perch  to 
wait  for  another.  /  should  call  him  the  "  apple- 
tree  flycatcher,"  if  the  matter  were  referred  to 
me. 

He  is  not  large,  —  little  bigger  than  an  Eng- 
lish sparrow,  —  but  he  has  plenty  of  courage  and 
a  strong  disposition  to  "  rule  the  roost,"  as  the 
saying  goes.  Every  country  boy  has  laughed  to 
see  the  kingbird  chasing  a  crow.  And  a  very 
lively  and  pleasing  sight  it  is :  the  crow  making 
for  the  nearest  wood  as  fast  as  his  wings  will 
carry  him,  and  one  or  two  kingbirds  in  hot  pur- 
suit. Their  great  aim  is  to  get  above  him  and 
swoop  down  upon  his  back.  Sometimes  you  will 
see  one  actually  alight  on  a  crow's  back  and,  as 
boys  say,  "  give  it  to  him  "  in  great  style. 

Another  taking  action  of  the  kingbird  is  his 


50  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

trick  of  flying  straight  up  in  the  air,  almost  per- 
pendicularly, as  if  he  were  trying  to  see  how  near 
he  could  come  to  performing  that  impossible  feat, 
and  then  tumbling  about  madly,  with  noisy  out- 
cries. Often  it  looks  as  if  he  actually  turned 
somersaults.  He  cannot  sing,  and  so  has  to  let 
his  high  spirits  bubble  over  in  these  half -crazy 
gymnastics.  All  in  all,  he  is  a  very  lively  and 
entertaining  customer. 

His  nest  is  built  in  a  tree,  often  in  an  orchard, 
and  is  comparatively  easy  to  find.  The  birds 
arrive  in  New  England  in  the  first  week  of  May, 
having  passed  the  winter  in  Central  or  South 
America,  and  remain  till  the  end  of  August. 

Like  most  birds,  they  are  very  punctual  in 
their  coming  and  going.  No  doubt  they  have 
an  almanac  of  their  own.  You  will  do  well  to 
find  one  of  them  in  Massachusetts  after  the  first 
two  or  three  days  of  September. 

Toward  the  end  of  their  stay,  flycatchers 
though  they  are,  they  feed  largely  upon  berries. 
I  have  seen  a  dozen  in  one  small  dogwood  bush, 
all  eating  greedily. 


XIII 

THE    HUMMINGBIRD 

HUMMINGBIRDS  are  found  only  in  America 
and  on  the  islands  near  it.  They  are  of  many 
kinds,  but  only  one  kind  is  ever  seen  in  the  east- 
ern United  States.  This  is  known  as  the  ruby- 
throated  hummingbird,  because  of  a  splendid  red 
throat-patch  worn  by  the  male.  To  speak  more 
exactly,  the  patch  is  red  only  in  some  lights. 
You  see  it  one  instant  as  black  as  a  coal,  and  the 
next  instant  it  flashes  like  a  coal  on  fire.  This 
ornament,  —  a  real  jewel,  —  with  the  lovely 
shining  green  of  the  bird's  back,  makes  him  an 
object  of  great  beauty. 

Every  one  knows  him,  or  would  do  so  only 
that  some  people  confuse  him  with  bright-colored, 
long-tongued  hummingbird  moths  that  are  seen 
hovering,  mostly  in  the  early  evening,  over  the 
flowers  of  the  garden. 

The  ruby-throat  spends  the  winter  south  of 
the  United  States.  He  arrives  in  Florida  in 
March,  but  does  not  reach  New  England  till  near 
the  middle  of  May. 


52  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

Many  persons  seem  to  imagine  that  the  hum- 
mer lives  on  the  wing.  They  have  never  seen 
one  sitting  still,  they  say.  But  the  truth  is  that 
hummingbirds  pass  but  a  small  part  of  the  time 
in  the  air.  They  are  so  very  small,  however, 
that  they  are  easily  overlooked  on  a  branch  of  a 
tree,  and  the  average  person  never  notices  them 
except  when  the  hum  of  their  wings  attracts  his 
attention. 

One  of  the  prettiest  sights  in  the  world  is  a 
hummingbird  hovering  before  a  blossom,  his 
wings  vibrating  so  fast  as  to  make  a  mist  about 
him,  and  his  long  needle  of  a  bill  probing  the 
flower  with  quick,  eager  thrusts.  All  his  move- 
ments are  of  lightning-like  rapidity,  and  even 
while  your  eyes  are  on  him  he  is  gone  like  a 
flash,  you  cannot  say  whither. 

The  hummingbird's  nest  is  built  on  a  branch 
of  a  tree,  —  saddled  on  it,  —  and  is  not  very 
hard  to  find  after  you  have  once  seen  one,  and 
so  have  learned  precisely  what  to  look  for. 
Generally  it  is  placed  well  out  toward  the  end  of 
the  limb.  I  have  found  it  on  pitch-pines  in  the 
woods,  on  roadside  maples,  —  shade  trees,  —  and 
especially  in  apple  and  pear  orchards.  The  mo- 
ther bird  is  very  apt  to  betray  its  whereabouts 
by  buzzing  about  the  head  of  any  one  who 
comes  near  it. 


RUBY-THROATED   HUMMINGBIRD 
/,  2.  Mates,    j.  Female.    4.  Young' 


THE  HUMMINGBIRD  53 

Last  May,  for  example,  I  stopped  in  the  mid- 
dle of  the  road  to  listen  for  the  voice  of  a  house 
wren,  when  I  caught  instead  the  buzz  and  squeak 
of  a  hummer.  Turning  my  gaze  upward,  I  saw 
her  fly  to  a  half-built  nest  on  a  maple  branch 
directly  over  my  head. 

The  nest  is  a  tiny  thing,  looking  for  size  and 
shape  like  a  cup  out  of  a  child's  toy  tea-set.  Its 
walls  are  thick,  and  on  the  outside  are  covered 
—  shingled,  we  may  say  —  with  bits  of  gray 
lichen,  which  help  to  make  the  nest  look  like 
nothing  more  than  a  knot.  Whether  they  are 
put  on  for  that  purpose,  or  by  way  of  ornament, 
is  more  than  I  can  tell. 

The  bird  always  lays  two  white  eggs,  about 
as  large  as  peas.  The  young  ones  stay  in  the 
nest  for  three  weeks,  more  or  less,  till  they  are 
fully  grown  and  fledged,  and  perfectly  well  able 
to  fly.  I  once  saw  one  take  his  first  flight,  and 
a  great  venture  it  seemed.  All  these  three 
weeks,  and  for  another  week  afterward,  the 
mother  —  no  father  is  present  —  has  her  hands 
full  to  supply  the  little  things  with  food,  which 
she  gives  them  from  her  crop,  thrusting  her 
long,  sharp  bill  clean  down  their  throats  in  the 
process,  in  a  way  to  make  a  looker-on  shiver. 
The  only  note  I  have  ever  heard  from  the  ruby- 
throat  is  a  squeak,  which  seems  to  be  an  expres- 


54  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

sion  of  nervousness  or  annoyance,  and  is  uttered 
•whenever  an  intruder  —  a  man,  a  cat,  or  a 
strange  bird  —  comes  near  the  tree  in  which  her 
treasures  are  hidden. 

Hummingbirds  sometimes  fly  into  open  win- 
dows  and  are  caught.  At  such  times  they  be- 
come tame  almost  at  once,  but  it  is  difficult,  if 
not  impossible,  to  keep  them  alive  in  captivity, 
and  it  is  cruel  to  attempt  it,  except  when  the 
little  creature  is  injured  and  plainly  unable  to 
look  out  for  itself. 

A  lady  of  my  acquaintance  discovered  a  hum- 
mingbird under  her  piazza.  It  had  flown  in  by 
accident,  probably,  and  now  was  darting  to  and 
fro  in  a  frantic  attempt  to  get  out.  The  piazza 
was  open  on  three  sides,  to  be  sure,  but  the 
frightened  bird  kept  up  against  the  ceiling,  and 
of  course  found  itself  walled  in. 

Fearful  that  it  would  injure  itself,  the  lady 
brought  a  broom  and  tried  to  force  it  to  come 
down  and  so  discover  its  way  out ;  but  it  was 
only  the  more  scared.  Then  a  happy  thought 
came  to  her.  She  went  to  the  garden,  plucked 
a  few  flowers,  and  going  back  to  the  piazza,  set 
them  down  for  the  bird  to  see.  Instantly  it  flew 
toward  them,  and  as  it  did  so  it  saw  the  open 
world  without,  and  away  it  went. 

Another  lady  wrote  me  once  a  very  pretty 


THE  HUMMINGBIRD  63 

story  of  a  hummer  that  came  and  probed  a  nas- 
turtium which  she  held  in  her  hand. 

It  is  wonderful  to  think  that  so  tiny  a  bird, 
born  in  New  England  or  in  Canada  in  June, 
should  travel  to  Cuba  or  Central  America  in  the 
autumn,  and  the  next  spring  find  its  way  back 
again  to  its  birthplace. 


XIV 

THE    CHIMNEY    SWIFT 

EVERY  kind  of  bird  is  adapted  to  get  its  living 
in  a  particular  way.  It  is  strong  in  some  re- 
spects, and  weak  in  others.  Some  birds  have 
powerful  legs,  but  can  hardly  fly  ;  others  live  on 
the  wing,  and  can  hardly  walk.  Of  these  flying 
birds  none  is  more  common  than  the  chimney 
swift,  or,  as  he  is  improperly  called,  the  chimney 
swallow.  No  one  ever  saw  him  sitting  on  a 
perch  or  walking  on  the  ground.  In  fact,  his 
wings  are  so  long,  and  his  legs  so  short  and  weak, 
that  if  he  were  to  alight  on  the  ground,  he  would 
probably  never  be  able  to  rise  into  the  air 
again. 

He  hardly  seems  to  need  a  description,  and 
yet  I  suppose  that  many  persons,  not  to  say 
people  in  general,  do  not  know  him  from  a  swal- 
low. His  color  is  sooty  brown,  turning  to  gray 
on  the  throat.  His  body,  as  he  is  seen  in  the 
air,  is  shaped  like  a  bobbin,  bluntly  pointed  at 
both  ends.  If  he  is  carefully  watched,  however, 


THE  CHIMNEY  SWIFT  57 

it  will  be  noticed  that  he  spreads  his  tail  for  an 
instant  whenever  he  changes  suddenly  the  direc- 
tion of  his  flight.  In  other  words,  he  uses  his 
tail  as  a  rudder. 

He  shoots  about  the  sky  at  a  tremendous 
speed,  much  of  the  time  sailing,  with  his  long,  nar- 
row wings  firmly  set,  and  is  especially  lively  and 
noisy  toward  nightfall.  Very  commonly  two  or 
three  of  the  birds  fly  side  by  side,  cackling 
merrily  and  acting  very  much  as  if  they  were 
amusing  themselves  with  some  kind  of  game. 

They  feed  on  the  wing,  and  have  wide,  gaping 
mouths  perfectly  adapted  to  that  purpose. 

As  their  name  implies,  they  build  their  nests 
and  pass  the  night  mostly  in  chimneys,  although 
in  the  wilder  parts  of  the  country  they  still 
inhabit  hollow  trees.  Numbers  of  pairs  live 
together  in  a  colony. 

One  of  the  chimneys  of  a  certain  house  near 
the  Charles  River,  in  Newton,  Massachusetts,  has 
for  many  years  been  a  favorite  resort  of  swifts. 
I  have  many  times  visited  the  place  to  watch  the 
birds  go  to  roost.  Little  by  little  they  gather  in 
a  flock,  as  twilight  comes  on,  and  then  for  an 
hour  or  more  the  whole  company,  hundreds  in 
number,  go  sweeping  over  the  valley  in  broad 
circles,  having  the  chimney  for  a  centre.  Grad- 
ually the  circles  become  narrower,  and  at  the 


58  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

same  time  the  excitement  of  the  flock  increases. 
Again  and  again  the  birds  approach  the  chim- 
ney, as  if  they  meant  to  descend  into  it.  Then 
away  they  shoot  for  another  round. 

At  length  the  going  to  roost  actually  begins. 
Half  a  dozen  or  a  dozen  of  the  birds  drop  one 
by  one  into  the  chimney.  The  rest  sweep  away, 
and  when  they  come  back,  a  second  detachment 
drops  in.  And  so  the  lively  performance  goes 
on  till  the  last  straggler  folds  his  wings  above 
the  big  black  cavity  and  tumbles  headlong  out 
of  sight. 

The  swift  makes  his  nest  of  twigs,  and  as  he 
cannot  alight  on  the  ground  in  search  of  them, 
he  is  compelled  to  gather  them  from  the  dead 
limbs  of  trees.  Over  and  over  again  you  will 
see  the  bird  dart  against  such  a  limb,  catching 
at  a  twig  as  he  pauses  for  the  merest  instant  be- 
fore it.  It  is  difficult  to  be  sure  whether  he  suc- 
ceeds or  not,  his  movements  are  so  rapid,  but  it 
is  certain  that  he  must  often  fail.  However,  he 
acts  upon  the  old  motto,  "  Try,  try  again,"  and 
in  course  of  time  the  nest  is  built.  And  an 
extremely  pretty  nest  it  is,  with  the  white  eggs 
in  it,  the  black  twigs  glued  firmly  together  with 
the  bird's  own  saliva. 


XV 

NIGHTHAWK   AND    WHIP-POOR-WILL 

RUSTIC  people  are  a  little  shy  of  theories  and 
"  book-learning."  Not  long  ago  —  it  was  early 
in  March  —  I  met  an  old  man  who  lives  by  him- 
self in  a  kind  of  hermitage  in  the  woods,  and 
who  knows  me  in  a  general  way  as  a  bird  stu- 
dent. We  greeted  each  other,  and  I  inquired 
whether  he  had  seen  any  bluebirds  yet.  No,  he 
said,  it  was  n't  time. 

"  Oh,  but  they  are  here,"  I  answered.  "  I  saw 
a  flock  of  ten  on  the  26th  of  February."  Good- 
natured  incredulity  came  out  all  over  his  face. 

"  Did  you  hear  them  sing  ?  "  he  asked. 

"  Yes,"  said  I ;  "  and,  furthermore,  I  saw 
some  this  forenoon  very  near  your  house." 

"  Well,"  he  remarked,  "  according  to  my  ex- 
perience, it  is  too  early  for  bluebirds.  Besides, 
they  never  go  in  flocks  ;  and  when  anybody  tells 
me  at  this  time  of  the  year  that  he  has  seen  a 
flock  of  bluebirds,  I  always  know  that  he  has  seen 
some  blue  snowbirds." 


60  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

He  spoke  with  an  air  of  finality  which  left  me 
nothing  to  do  but  to  smile  and  pass  on. 

This  little  incident  called  to  mind  another,  and 
that  put  it  into  my  head  to  write  this  article. 

A  farmer,  who  had  seen  me  passing  his  house 
and  loitering  about  his  lanes  and  fields  for  sev- 
eral years,  often  with  an  opera-glass  in  my  hand, 
one  day  hailed  me  to  ask  whether  the  nighthawk 
and  the  whip-poor-will  were  the  same  bird,  as  he 
had  heard  people  say.  I  assured  him  (or  rather 
I  told  him  —  it  turned  out  that  I  had  not  made 
him  sure)  that  they  were  quite  distinct,  and  pro- 
ceeded to  remark  upon  some  of  the  more  obvious 
points  of  difference  between  the  two,  especially 
as  to  their  habits  and  manner  of  life.  He  lis- 
tened with  all  deference  to  what  I  had  to  offer, 
but  as  I  concluded  and  turned  to  leave  him,  he 
said  :  "  Well,  some  folks  say  they  're  the  same. 
They  say  one 's  the  he  one  and  t'  other 's  the  she 
one ;  but  I  guess  they  ain't." 

Verily,  thought  I,  popular  science  lectures  are 
sometimes  a  failure.  Not  long  afterward  I  was 
telling  the  story  to  a  Massachusetts  man,  a  man  who 
had  made  a  collection  of  birds'  eggs  in  his  time. 

"  Why,"  said  he,  "  are  n't  they  the  same  ?  I 
always  understood  that  they  were  the  male  and 
female  of  the  same  species.  That  was  the  com- 
mon belief  where  I  was  brought  up." 


NIGHTHAWK 


NIGHTHAWK  AND  WHIP-POOR-WILL         61 

•  The  confusion  of  the  two  birds  is  widespread, 
in  spite  of  Audubon's  testimony  that  he  had  sel- 
dom seen  a  farmer  or  even  a  boy  in  the  United 
States  who  did  not  know  the  difference  between 
them.  But,  while  they  resemble  each  other 
closely,  they  are  sufficiently  unlike  to  be  classi- 
fied not  only  as  separate  species,  but  as  species 
of  different  genera.  As  for  the  difference  in 
their  habits,  it  is  such  as  any  one  may  see  and 
appreciate.  The  nighthawk,  for  all  its  name,  is 
not  a  night  bird.  It  is  most  active  at  twilight, 
—  in  other  words,  it  is  crepuscular  instead  of 
nocturnal,  —  but  is  often  to  be  seen  flying  abroad 
at  midday.  The  whip-poor-will,  on  the  contrary, 
is  quiet  till  after  dark.  Then  it  starts  into  full- 
ness of  life,  singing  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm, 
till  the  listener  wonders  where  it  can  find  breath 
for  such  rapid  and  long-continued  efforts.  The 
nighthawk  is  not  a  musician.  While  flying  it 
frequently  utters  a  single  note,  of  a  guttural- 
nasal  quality,  almost  indistinguishable  from  the 
so-called  bleat  of  the  woodcock ;  but,  in  place  of 
singing,  it  indulges  in  a  fine  aerial  tumbling  per- 
formance, much  in  the  manner  of  the  snipe. 
This  performance  I  have  many  times  observed 
in  early  summer  from  the  Public  Garden  in  Bos- 
ton. I  have  seen  it  also  in  September,  though 
it  is  doubtless  much  less  common  at  that  season. 


62  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

The  bird  rises  gradually  to  a  considerable  height, 
and  presently  drops  like  a  stone  almost  to  the 
ground.  At  the  last  moment  it  arrests  itself  sud- 
denly, and  then  is  heard  a  very  peculiar  "  boom- 
ing "  noise,  whether  produced  by  the  wings  or 
by  the  voice,  I  will  not  presume  to  say. 

The  most  attractive  feature  of  the  nighthawk, 
to  my  eye,  is  its  beautiful  and  peculiar  flight  — 
a  marvel  of  ease  and  grace,  and  sufficient  to  dis- 
tinguish it  at  a  glance  from  every  other  New 
England  bird.  It  is  a  creature  of  the  upper  air, 
never  skimming  the  ground,  so  far  as  I  know, 
and  as  it  passes  overhead  you  may  easily  see  the 
large  white  patch  in  the  middle  of  each  long 
wing  —  a  beauty  spot,  by  the  way,  which  is 
common  to  both  sexes,  and  is  wanting  in  the 
whip-poor-will. 

The  whip-poor-will's  chief  distinction  is  its 
song  —  a  song  by  itself,  and  familiar  to  every 
one.  Some  people  call  it  mournful,  and  I  fear 
there  are  still  a  few  superstitious  souls  who  listen 
to  it  with  a  kind  of  trembling.  I  have  heard  of 
the  bird's  being  shot  because  the  inhabitants  of  a 
house  could  not  bear  its  doleful  and  boding  cry, 
as  they  were  pleased  to  consider  it.  To  my  ears 
it  is  sweet  music.  I  take  many  an  evening  stroll 
on  purpose  to  enjoy  it,  and  am  perennially  thank- 
ful to  Audubon  for  saying  that  he  found  the 


WHIP-POOR-WILL 


NIGHTHAWK  AND  WHIP-POOR-WILL         63 

whip-poor- will's  "  cheering  voice  "  more  interest- 
ing than  the  song  of  the  nightingale. 

It  will  surprise  unscientific  readers  to  be  told 
that  the  nearest  relatives  of  whip-poor-wills  and 
nighthawks  are  the  swifts  and  the  humming- 
birds. As  if  a  chimney  swift  were  more  like  a 
whip-poor-will  than  like  a  swallow !  and,  still 
more  absurd,  as  if  there  were  any  close  relation- 
ship between  whip-poor-wills  and  hummingbirds  ! 
Put  a  whip-poor-will  and  a  ruby-throated  hum- 
mer side  by  side  and  they  certainly  do  look  very 
little  alike  —  the  big  whip-poor-will,  with  its 
mottled  plumage  and  its  short,  gaping  beak,  and 
the  tiny  hummingbird  with  its  burnished  feathers 
and  its  long  needle  of  a  bill.  Evidently  there 
is  no  great  reliance  to  be  placed  upon  outside 
show,  or  what  scientific  men  call  "  external 
characters."  We  might  as  well  say  that  the 
strawberry  vine  and  the  apple-tree  were  own 
cousins.  Yes,  so  we  might,  for  the  apple-tree 
and  the  strawberry  vine  are  cousins  —  at  least 
they  are  members  of  the  same  great  and  noble 
family,  the  family  of  the  roses  !  We  shall  never 
get  far,  in  science  or  in  anything  else,  until  we 
learn  to  look  below  the  surface. 


XVI 

THE   FLICKER 

THE  flicker  is  the  largest  of  our  common 
American  woodpeckers,  being  somewhat  longer 
and  stouter  than  the  robin.  It  is  known,  by 
sight  at  least,  to  almost  every  one  who  notices 
birds  at  all,  and  perhaps  for  this  reason  it  has 
received  an  unusual  number  of  popular  names. 
"  Golden-winged  woodpecker,"  which  is  proba- 
bly the  best  known  of  these,  comes  from  the  fact 
that  the  bird's  wings  are  yellow  on  the  under 
side.  "  Harry  Wicket,"  "  Highhole,"  —  because 
its  nest  is  sometimes  pretty  far  above  the  ground, 
—  "  Yellowhammer,"  and  "  Pigeon-woodpecker  " 
are  also  among  its  more  familiar  nicknames. 

Unlike  other  birds  of  its  family,  the  flicker 
passes  much  of  its  time  on  the  ground,  where 
it  hops  awkwardly  about,  feeding  upon  insects, 
especially  upon  ants.  As  you  come  near  it, 
while  it  is  thus  engaged,  it  rises  with  a  peculiar 
purring  sound,  and  as  it  flies  from  you  it  shows 
a  broad  white  patch  on  its  rump  —  the  lower 


FLICKER 
/.  Male.     2.  Females 


THE  FLICKER  65 

back,  above  the  root  of  the  tail.  Every  one  who 
has  ever  walked  much  over  grassy  fields  must 
have  seen  the  bird  and  been  struck  by  this  con- 
spicuous light  mark.  He  must  have  noticed, 
too,  the  bird's  peculiar  up-and-down,  "  jumping  " 
manner  of  flight,  by  which  it  goes  swooping 
across  the  country  in  long  undulations  or 
waves. 

The  flicker's  general  color  is  brown,  with  spot- 
tings  and  streakings  of  black,  and  more  or  less 
of  violet  or  lilac  shading.  On  the  back  of  its 
neck  it  wears  a  band  of  bright  scarlet,  and  across 
its  breast  is  a  conspicuous  black  crescent. 

It  is  fond  of  old  apple  orchards,  and  often 
makes  its  nest  in  a  decaying  trunk.  In  some 
places,  near  the  seashore,  especially,  —  where  it 
is  commoner  than  elsewhere  in  winter,  and  where 
large  trees  are  scarce,  —  it  makes  enemies  by  its 
habit  of  drilling  holes  in  barns  and  even  in 
churches.  I  remember  a  meeting-house  on  Cape 
Cod  which  had  a  good  number  of  such  holes  in 
its  front  wall  —  or  rather  it  had  the  scars  of 
such  holes,  for  they  had  been  covered  with 
patches  of  tin.  That  was  a  case  where  going  to 
church  might  be  called  a  bad  habit. 

In  fall  and  winter,  if  not  at  other  seasons,  the 
flicker  feeds  largely  upon  berries.  In  years 
when  the  poison  ivy  bears  a  good  crop,  I  am 


66  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

pretty  sure  to  find  two  or  three  flickers  all  winter 
long  about  a  certain  farm,  the  stone  walls  of 
which  are  overrun  with  this  handsome  but  un- 
wholesome vine,  although  it  is  hard  to  imagine 
that  the  dry,  stony  fruit  should  yield  much  in 
the  way  of  nourishment,  even  to  a  woodpecker. 

As  spring  comes  on,  the  flicker  becomes 
numerous  and  very  noisy.  His  best  known  vocal 
effort  is  a  prolonged  hi-hi-hi,  very  loud  and  ring- 
ing, and  kept  up  until  the  listener  wonders  where 
the  author  of  it  gets  his  wind.  This,  I  think,  is 
the  bird's  substitute  for  a  song.  He  has  at  all 
times  a  loud,  unmusical  yawp,  —  a  signal,  I  sup- 
pose, —  and  in  the  mating  season  especially  he 
utters  a  very  affectionate,  conversational  wicker 
or  flicker.  Every  country  boy  should  be  familiar 
with  these  three  notes. 

But  besides  being  a  vocalist,  —  we  can  hardly 
call  him  a  singer,  —  the  flicker  is  a  player  upon 
instruments.  He  is  a  great  drummer ;  and  if 
any  one  imagines  that  woodpeckers  do  not  enjoy 
the  sound  of  their  own  music,  he  should  watch 
a  flicker  drumming  with  his  long  bill  on  a  bat- 
tered tin  pan  in  the  middle  of  a  pasture.  Morn- 
ing after  morning  I  have  seen  one  thus  engaged, 
drumming  lustily,  and  then  cocking  his  head  to 
listen  for  an  answer;  and  Paderewski  at  his 
daily  practice  upon  the  piano  could  not  have 


THE  FLICKER  67 

looked  more  in  earnest.  At  other  times  the 
flicker  contents  himself  with  a  piece  of  resonant 
loose  bark  or  a  dry  limb. 

One  proof  that  this  drumming  —  which  is 
indulged  in  by  woodpeckers  generally  —  is  a 
true  musical  performance,  and  not  a  mere  drill- 
ing for  grubs,  is  the  fact  that  we  never  hear  it 
in  winter.  It  begins  as  the  weather  grows  mild, 
and  is  as  much  a  sign  of  spring  as  the  peeping 
of  the  little  tree-frogs  —  hylas  —  in  the  meadow. 

The  flicker's  nest,  as  I  have  said,  is  built  in  a 
hole  in  a  tree,  often  an  apple-tree.  Very  noisy 
in  his  natural  disposition,  he  keeps  a  wise  silence 
while  near  the  spot  where  his  mate  is  sitting,  and 
will  rear  a  brood  under  the  orchard-owner's  nose 
without  betraying  himself.  The  young  birds 
are  fed  from  the  parent's  crop,  as  young  pigeons 
and  young  hummingbirds  are.  The  old  bird 
thrusts  its  bill  down  the  throat  of  the  nestling 
and  gives  it  a  meal  of  partially  digested  food  by 
what  scientific  people  call  a  process  of  regurgita- 
tion.  Farmers'  boys,  who  have  watched  pigeons 
feeding  their  squabs,  will  know  precisely  what  is 
meant. 


xvn 

THE   BITTEBN 

IT  was  a  great  day  for  me  when  I  first  heard 
the  so-called  booming  of  the  bittern.  For  more 
than  ten  years  I  had  devoted  the  principal  part 
of  my  spare  hours  to  the  study  of  birds,  but 
though  I  had  taken  many  an  evening  walk  near 
the  most  promising  meadows  in  my  neighbor- 
hood, I  could  never  hear  those  mysterious  pump- 
ing or  stake-driving  noises  of  which  I  had  read 
with  so  much  interest,  especially  in  the  writings 
of  Thoreau. 

The  truth  was,  as  I  have  since  assured  myself, 
that  this  representative  of  the  heron  family  was 
not  a  resident  within  the  limits  of  my  everyday 
rambles,  none  of  the  meadows  thereabout  being 
extensive  and  secluded  enough  to  suit  his  whim. 

There  came  a  day,  however,  when  with  a 
friend  I  made  an  afternoon  excursion  to  Way- 
land,  Massachusetts,  on  purpose  to  form  the 
stake-driver's  acquaintance.  We  walked  up  the 
railway  track  across  the  river  toward  Sudbury, 


THE  BITTERN  69 

and  were  hardly  seated  on  the  edge  of  the 
meadow,  facing  the  beautiful  Nobscot  Hill,  be- 
fore my  comrade  said,  "  Hark  !  There  he  is  !  " 

Yes,  that  certainly  was  the  very  sound  —  an 
old-fashioned  wooden  pump  at  work  in  the 
meadow. 

We  listened  intently  for  perhaps  half  a  dozen 
times;  then  I  proposed  going  further  up  the 
track  to  get  the  notes  at  shorter  range,  and  pos- 
sibly —  who  could  tell  what  unheard-of  thing 
might  happen  ?  —  to  obtain  a  sight  of  the  bird. 
We  advanced  cautiously,  though  as  we  were  on 
the  track,  six  feet  or  more  above  the  level  of  the 
meadow,  there  was  no  chance  of  concealment, 
and  the  bittern  went  on  with  his  performance. 

Meanwhile  we  maintained  a  sharp  lookout,  and 
presently  I  descried  a  narrow  brown  object  stand- 
ing upright  amidst  the  grass  —  a  stick,  perhaps. 
I  lifted  my  opera-glass  and  spoke  quickly  to  my 
friend  :  "  I  see  him  !  " 

"Where?"  he  asked;  and  when  I  lowered 
my  glass  and  gave  him  the  bird's  bearings  as 
related  to  the  remains  of  an  old  hayrick  not  far 
off,  he  said,  "  Why,  I  saw  that,  but  took  it  for  a 
stick." 

"  Yes,  but  see  the  eye,"  I  answered. 

Within  half  a  minute  the  bird  suddenly  threw 
his  head  forward  and  commenced  pumping. 


70  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

This  was  good  luck  indeed,  —  that  I  should 
surprise  my  very  first  bittern  in  his  famous  act, 
a  thing  which  better  men  than  I,  after  years  of 
familiarity  with  the  bird,  had  never  once  suc- 
ceeded in  accomplishing.  Who  says  that  For- 
tune does  not  sometimes  favor  the  fresh  hand  ? 

The  fellow  repeated  the  operation  three  times, 
and  between  whiles  moved  stealthily  through 
the  grass  toward  the  leavings  of  the  haycock 
before  mentioned. 

When  he  reached  the  hay,  we  held  our  breath. 
Would  he  actually  mount  it?  Yes,  that  was 
undoubtedly  his  intention ;  but  he  meant  to  do 
it  in  such  a  way  that  no  mortal  eye  should  see 
him.  All  the  time  glancing  furtively  to  left  and 
right,  as  if  the  grass  were  full  of  enemies,  he  put 
one  foot  before  the  other  with  almost  inconceiv- 
able slowness,  —  as  the  hour  hand  turns  on  the 
clock's  face.  It  was  an  admirable  display  of  an 
art  which  this  race  of  frog,  mouse,  and  insect 
catchers  has  cultivated  for  untold  generations  — 
an  art  on  which  its  livelihood  depends,  the  art 
of  invisible  motion. 

There  was  no  resisting  the  ludicrousness  of 
his  manner.  He  was  in  full  view,  but  so  long 
as  he  kept  still  he  seemed  to  think  himself  quite 
safe  from  detection.  Like  the  hand  of  the  clock, 
however,  if  he  was  slow  he  was  sure,  and  in  time 


THE  BITTERN  71 

he  was  fairly  out  of  the  grass,  standing  in  plain 
sight  upon  his  hay  platform. 

Once  in  position  he  fell  to  pumping  in  earnest, 
and  kept  it  up  for  more  than  an  hour,  while  two 
enthusiasts  sat  upon  the  railway  embankment, 
twelve  or  thirteen  rods  distant,  with  opera-glasses 
and  note-books,  scrutinizing  his  every  motion, 
and  felicitating  themselves  again  and  again  on 
seeing  thus  plainly  what  so  few  had  ever  seen  at 
all.  What  would  Thoreau  have  given  for  such 
an  opportunity  ? 

"  The  stake-driver  is  at  it  in  his  favorite 
meadow,"  he  writes  in  his  journal,  in  1852.  "  I 
followed  the  sound,  and  at  last  got  within  two 
rods,  it  seeming  always  to  recede,  and  drawing 
you,  like  a  will-o'-the-wisp,  farther  away  into  the 
meadows.  When  thus  near,  I  heard  some  lower 
sounds  at  the  beginning  like  striking  on  a  stump 
or  a  stake,  a  dry,  hard  sound,  and  then  followed 
the  gurgling,  pumping  notes  fit  to  come  from  a 
meadow. 

"  This  was  just  within  the  blueberry  and  other 
bushes,  and  when  the  bird  flew  up,  alarmed,  I 
went  to  the  place,  but  could  see  no  water,  which 
makes  me  doubt  if  water  is  necessary  to  it  in 
making  the  sound.  Perhaps  it  thrusts  its  bill  so 
deep  as  to  reach  water  where  it  is  dry  on  the 
surface." 


72  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

This  notion  that  water  is  employed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  the  bittern's  notes  has  been  generally 
entertained.  The  notes  themselves  are  of  a  char- 
acter to  suggest  such  an  hypothesis,  and  at  least 
one  witness  has  borne  circumstantial  testimony 
to  its  truth.  In  Thoreau's  essay  on  the  "  Natu- 
ral History  of  Massachusetts/'  he  says  :  — 

"  On  one  occasion,  the  bird  has  been  seen  by 
one  of  my  neighbors  to  thrust  its  bill  into  the 
water,  and  suck  up  as  much  as  it  could  hold ; 
then,  raising  its  head,  it  pumped  it  out  again 
with  four  or  five  heaves  of  the  neck,  throwing  it 
two  or  three  feet,  and  making  the  sound  each 
time." 

Similar  statements  have  been  made  as  to  the 
corresponding  notes  of  the  European  bittern. 
None  of  our  systematic  writers  upon  American 
ornithology  have  ever  witnessed  the  performance, 
as  far  as  appears,  and  being  too  honest  to  draw 
upon  their  imaginations,  they  have  left  the  matter 
a  mystery.  Now,  on  this  auspicious  May  after- 
noon, if  we  learned  nothing  else,  we  could  at  all 
events  make  quite  sure  whether  or  not  the  bittern 
did  really  spout  water  from  his  beak. 

My  readers  will  have  guessed  already  that  our 
bird,  at  least,  did  nothing  of  the  sort.  His  bill 
was  never  within  reach  of  water.  The  operation 
is  a  queer  one,  hard  to  describe. 


THE  BITTERN  73 

The  bittern  has  been  standing  motionless,  per- 
haps in  the  humpbacked  attitude  in  which  the 
artists,  following  Audubon's  plate,  have  com- 
monly represented  him ;  or  quite  as  likely,  he 
has  been  making  a  stick  or  a  soldier  of  himself, 
standing  bolt  upright  at  full  stretch,  his  long 
neck  and  bill  pointed  straight  at  the  zenith. 

Suddenly  he  lowers  his  head,  and  instantly 
raises  it  again  and  throws  it  forward  with  a 
quick,  convulsive  jerk.  This  movement  is  at- 
tended by  an  opening  and  shutting  of  the  bill, 
which  in  turn  is  accompanied  by  a  sound  which 
has  been  well  compared  to  a  violent  hiccough. 
The  hiccough  —  with  which,  I  think,  the  click  of 
the  big  mandibles  may  sometimes  be  heard  —  is 
repeated  a  few  times,  each  time  a  little  louder 
than  before ;  and  then  succeed  the  real  pumping 
or  stake-driving  noises. 

These  are  in  sets  of  three  syllables  each,  of 
which  the  first  syllable  is  the  longest,  and  some- 
what separated  from  the  others.  The  accent  is 
strongly  upon  the  middle  syllable,  and  the  whole, 
as  of tenest  heard,  is  an  exact  reproduction  of  the 
sound  of  a  wooden  pump,  as  I  have  already  said, 
the  voice  having  that  peculiar  hollow  quality 
which  is  produced,  not  by  the  flow  of  the  water, 
but  by  the  suction  of  the  air  in  the  tube  when 
the  pump  begins  to  work. 


74  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

But  the  looker-on  is  likely  to  be  quite  as  much 
impressed  by  what  he  sees  as  by  what  he  hears. 
During  the  whole  performance,  but  especially 
during  the  latter  part  of  it,  the  bird  is  engaged 
in  the  most  violent  contortions,  suggestive  of 
nothing  but  a  patient  suffering  from  uncontrol- 
lable nausea.  Moreover,  as  soon  as  the  prelimi- 
nary hiccoughs  begin,  the  lower  throat  or  breast 
is  seen  to  be  swelling ;  the  dilatation  grows 
larger  and  larger  till  the  pumping  is  well  under 
way,  and  so  far  as  my  companion  and  I  could 
detect,  does  not  subside  in  the  least  until  the 
noises  have  ceased  altogether. 

How  are  the  unique,  outlandish  notes  pro- 
duced ?  I  cannot  profess  to  know.  Our  opinion 
was  that  the  bird  swallowed  air  into  his  gullet, 
gulping  it  down  with  each  snap  of  the  beak.  To 
all  appearance  it  was  necessary  for  him  to  inflate 
the  crop  in  this  way  before  he  could  pump,  or 
boom.  As  to  how  much  of  the  grand  booming 
was  connected  with  the  swallowing  of  the  air, 
and  how  much,  if  any,  with  the  expulsion  of  it, 
my  friend  and  I  did  not  agree,  and  of  course 
neither  of  us  could  do  more  than  guess. 

I  made  some  experiments  afterwards,  by  way 
of  imitating  the  noises ;  and  these  experiments, 
together  with  the  fact  that  the  grand  booming 
seemed  to  be  really  nothing  more  than  a  develop- 


THE  BITTERN  75 

ment  of  the  preliminary  hiccoughs,  and  the  fur- 
ther fact  that  the  swelling  of  the  breast  did  not 
go  down  gradually  during  the  course  of  the  per- 
formance, but  suddenly  at  the  close,  —  all  these 
incline  me  to  believe  that  the  notes  are  mainly  if 
not  entirely  caused  by  the  inhalation  or  swallow- 
ing of  the  air ;  and  I  am  somewhat  strengthened 
in  this  opinion  by  perceiving  that  when  a  man 
takes  air  into  his  stomach  the  act  is  attended  by 
a  sound  not  altogether  unlike  the  bittern's  note 
in  quality,  while  the  expulsion  of  it  gives  rise  to 
noises  of  an  entirely  dissimilar  character. 

That  the  sounds  in  question  were  not  made 
entirely  by  any  ordinary  action  of  the  vocal  or- 
gans was  the  decided  opinion  of  both  my  friend 
and  myself. 

As  I  have  said,  we  watched  the  performance 
for  more  than  an  hour.  We  were  sitting  squarely 
upon  the  track,  and  once  were  compelled  to  get 
up  to  let  a  train  pass ;  but  the  bittern  evidently 
paid  no  attention  to  matters  on  the  railway,  being 
well  used  to  thunder  in  that  direction,  and  stood 
his  ground  without  wincing. 

When  he  had  pumped  long  enough,  —  and  the 
operation  surely  looked  like  pretty  hard  work,  — 
he  suddenly  took  wing  and  flew  a  little  distance 
down  the  meadow.  The  moment  he  dropped  into 
the  grass  he  pumped,  and  on  making  another 


76  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

flight  he  again  pumped  immediately  upon  coming 
to  the  ground.  This  trick,  which  surprised  me 
not  a  little  in  view  of  the  severe  exertion  required, 
is  perhaps  akin  to  the  habit  of  smaller  birds,  who 
in  seasons  of  excitement  will  very  often  break 
into  song  at  the  moment  of  striking  a  perch. 

As  we  came  down  the  track  on  our  way  back 
to  the  station,  three  bitterns  were  in  the  air  at 
once,  while  a  fourth  was  booming  on  the  opposite 
side  of  the  road.  One  of  the  flying  birds  per- 
sistently dangled  his  legs  instead  of  drawing 
them  up  in  the  usual  fashion  and  letting  the  feet 
stick  out  behind,  parallel  with  the  tail.  Probably 
he  was  "  showing  off,"  as  is  the  custom  of  many 
birds  during  the  season  of  mating. 

Our  bird  across  the  road,  by  the  bye,  was  not 
pumping,  but  driving  a  stake.  The  middle  sylla- 
ble was  truly  a  mighty  whack  with  a  mallet  on 
the  head  of  a  post,  so  that  I  could  easily  enough 
credit  Mr.  Samuels's  statement  that  he  once  fol- 
lowed the  sound  for  half  a  mile,  expecting  to 
find  a  farmer  setting  a  fence. 

In,  the  midst  of  the  hurly-burly  we  saw  a  boy 
coming  toward  us  on  the  track. 

"  Let 's  ask  him  about  it,"  said  my  companion. 

So,  with  an  air  of  inquisitive  ignorance,  he 
stopped  the  fellow,  and  inquired,  "  Do  you  know 
what  it  is  we  hear  making  that  curious  noise  off 
there  in  the  meadow  ?  " 


THE  BITTERN  77 

The  boy  evidently  took  us  for  a  pair  of  igno- 
ramuses from  the  city. 

"  I  guess  it 's  a  frog,"  he  answered.  But  when 
the  sounds  were  repeated  he  shook  his  head  and 
confessed  honestly  that  he  did  n't  know  what 
made  them. 

It  was  too  bad,  I  thought,  that  he  did  not 
stick  to  his  frog  theory.  It  would  have  made  so 
much  better  a  story!  He  appeared  to  feel  no 
curiosity  about  the  matter,  and  we  allowed  him 
to  pass  on  unenlightened. 

Not  all  Wayland  people  are  thus  poorly  in- 
formed, however,  and  we  shortly  learned,  to  our 
considerable  satisfaction,  that  they  have  a  most 
felicitous  local  name  for  the  bird.  They  call 
him  "  plum-pudd'nY '  which  is  exactly  what  he 
himself  says,  only  that  his  u  is  in  both  words 
somewhat  long,  like  the  vowel  in  "full."  To 
get  the  true  effect  of  the  words  they  should  be 
spoken  with  the  lips  nearly  closed,  and  in  a  deep 
voice. 

A  few  days  after  this  excursion  I  found  a  bit- 
tern in  a  large  wet  meadow  somewhat  nearer 
home.  At  the  nearest  he  was  a  long  way  off, 
and  as  I  went  farther  and  farther  away  from 
him,  I  remarked  the  very  unexpected  fact  that 
the  last  syllable  to  be  lost  was  not  the  second, 
which  bears  so  sharp  an  accent,  but  the  long 


78  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

first  syllable.  It  seemed  contrary  to  reason,  but 
such  was  unquestionably  the  truth,  and  later 
experiments  confirmed  it. 

This  was  in  the  spring  of  1888.  In  May  of 
the  next  year,  if  all  went  well,  we  would  see  the 
show  again.  So  we  said  to  each  other ;  but  a 
veteran  ornithologist  remarked  that  we  should 
probably  be  a  good  many  years  older  before  we 
had  another  such  piece  of  good  fortune. 

It  is  a  fact  familiar  to  all  naturalists,  however, 
that  when  you  have  once  found  a  new  plant,  or 
a  new  bird,  or  a  new  nest,  the  experience  is 
likely  to  be  soon  repeated.  You  may  have  spent 
a  dozen  years  in  a  vain  search,  but  now,  for 
some  reason,  the  difficult  has  all  at  once  become 
easy,  and  almost  before  you  can  believe  your 
eyes  the  rarity  has  grown  to  be  a  drug  in  the 
market.  Something  like  this  proved  to  be  true 
of  the  bittern's  boom. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  2d  of  May,  1889,  I 
went  to  one  of  my  favorite  resorts,  a  large  cat- 
tail swamp  surrounded  by  woods.  My  particu- 
lar errand  was  to  see  whether  the  least  bittern 
had  arrived,  —  a  much  smaller,  and  in  this  part 
of  the  country,  at  least,  a  much  less  common 
bird  than  his  relative  of  whose  vocal  accomplish- 
ments I  am  here  treating. 

I  threw  myself  down  upon  the  cliff  overhang- 


THE  BITTERN  79 

ing  the  edge  of  the  swamp,  to  listen  for  the 
desired  coo-coo-coo-coo,  and  had  barely  made  my- 
self comfortable  when  I  heard  the  plum-pudd'n* 
of  the  bittern  himself,  proceeding,  as  it  seemed, 
from  the  reeds  directly  at  my  feet.  Further  lis- 
tening satisfied  me  that  the  fellow  was  not  far 
from  the  end  of  a  rocky  peninsula  which  juts 
into  the  swamp  just  at  this  point. 

I  slipped  down  the  cliff  as  quietly  as  possible, 
picked  my  way  across  the  narrow  neck  leading  to 
the  main  peninsula,  and  by  keeping  behind  rocks 
and  trees  managed  to  reach  the  very  tip  without 
disturbing  the  bird.  Here  I  posted  myself  among 
the  thick  trees,  and  awaited  a  repetition  of  the 
boom.  It  was  not  long  in  coming,  and  plainly 
proceeded  from  a  bunch  of  flags  just  across  a 
little  stretch  of  clear  water. 

I  looked  and  looked,  while  the  bittern  con- 
tinued to  pump  at  rather  protracted  intervals ; 
but  I  could  see  nothing  whatever,  till  presto  ! 
there  the  creature  stood  in  plain  sight. 

Whether  he  had  moved  into  view,  or  had  all 
the  time  been  visible,  I  cannot  tell.  He  soon 
pumped  again,  and  then  again,  for  perhaps  six 
times.  Then  he  stalked  away  out  of  sight,  and 
I  heard  nothing  more.  He  was  much  nearer 
than  last  year's  bird  had  been,  but  was  still  a 
pumper,  not  a  stake-driver,  and  his  action  was  in 
all  respects  the  same  as  I  had  before  witnessed. 


60  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

There  had  been  no  bittern  in  this  swamp  the 
season  previous,  nor  did  any  breed  here  this 
summer.  I  visited  the  place  too  often  for  him 
to  have  escaped  my  notice,  had  he  been  present. 
This  bird,  then,  was  a  migrant,  and  his  booming 
was  of  interest  as  showing  that  the  bittern,  like 
the  song-birds,  does  not  wait  to  get  into  summer 
quarters  before  beginning  to  rehearse  his  love 
music. 

Two  days  after  this  my  companion  of  the  year 
before  went  with  me  again  to  Way  land,  and,  not 
to  prolong  a  long  story,  we  sat  again  upon  the 
railway  and  watched  a  bittern  pump  for  more 
than  an  hour.  This  time,  to  be  sure,  he  was 
partially  concealed  by  the  grass,  besides  being 
farther  awray  than  we  could  have  wished. 

It  was  curious,  and  illustrated  strikingly  the 
utility  of  the  bird's  habit  of  standing  motionless, 
that  my  friend,  who  is  certainly  as  sharp-eyed  an 
observer  as  I  have  ever  known,  was  once  more 
completely  taken  in.  As  luck  would  have  it,  I 
caught  sight  of  the  bird  first,  and  when  I  pointed 
him  out  to  the  other  man  he  replied,  "  Why,  of 
course  I  saw  that,  but  it  never  occurred  to  me 
but  that  it  was  a  stake." 

We  returned  from  this  excursion  fairly  well 
convinced  that  in  the  early  part  of  the  season, 
while  the  grass  is  still  short,  one  may  hope  to 


THE  BITTERN  81 

see  a  bittern  pump  almost  any  day,  if  he  will  go 
to  a  suitable  meadow  which  has  a  railroad  run- 
ning through  it.  The  track  answers  a  double 
purpose :  it  gives  the  observer  an  outlook,  such 
as  cannot  be  obtained  from  a  boat,  and  further- 
more, the  birds  are  quite  unsuspicious  of  things 
on  the  track,  while  the  presence  of  a  man  in  the 
grass  or  on  the  river  would  almost  inevitably 
attract  their  attention. 


xvm 

BIRDS    FOB   EVERYBODY 

SOME  birds  belong  exclusively  to  specialists. 
They  are  so  rare,  or  their  manner  of  life  is  so 
seclusive,  that  people  in  general  can  never  be 
expected  to  know  them  except  from  books.  The 
latest  list  of  the  birds  of  Massachusetts  includes 
about  three  hundred  and  fifty  species  and  sub- 
species. Of  these,  seventy-five  or  more  are  so 
foreign  to  this  part  of  the  country  as  to  have  ap- 
peared here  only  by  accident,  while  many  others 
are  so  excessively  rare  that  no  individual  observer 
can  count  upon  seeing  them,  however  close  a 
lookout  he  may  keep.  Other  species  are  present 
in  goodly  numbers,  but  only  in  certain  portions 
of  the  State ;  and  still  others,  though  generally 
distributed  and  fairly  numerous,  live  habitually 
in  almost  impenetrable  swamps  or  in  deep  forests, 
and  of  necessity  are  seen  only  by  those  who  make 
it  their  business  to  look  for  them. 

It  is  something  for  which  busy  men  and  women 
may  well  be  thankful,  therefore,  that  so  many  of 


BIRDS  FOR  EVERYBODY  83 

the  most  pleasing,  or  otherwise  interesting,  of  all 
our  birds  are  among  those  which  may  be  called 
birds  for  everybody.  Such  are  the  robin,  the 
bluebird,  the  Baltimore  oriole, —  or  golden  robin, 
—  the  blue  jay,  the  crow,  and  the  chickadee.  Of 
all  these  we  may  say  that  they  are  common  ;  they 
come  in  every  one's  way,  and,  what  is  still  more 
to  the  point,  they  cannot  be  mistaken  for  any- 
thing else.  Others  are  equally  common,  and  are 
easily  enough  seen,  but  their  identity  is  not  so 
much  a  matter  of  course. 

The  song  sparrow,  for  example,  is  abundant  in 
Massachusetts  from  the  middle  of  March  to  the 
end  of  October.  Outside  of  the  forest  it  is  almost 
ubiquitous;  it  sings  beautifully  and  with  the 
utmost  freedom ;  it  ought,  one  would  say,  to  be 
universally  known.  But  it  is  a  sparrow,  not  the 
sparrow.  In  other  words,  it  is  only  one  of  many, 
and  so,  common  as  it  is,  and  freely  as  it  sings  (it 
is  to  be  heard  in  every  garden  and  by  every  road- 
side in  the  latter  half  of  March,  when  few  other 
birds  are  in  tune),  it  passes  unrecognized  by  the 
generality  of  people.  They  read  in  books  of  song 
sparrows,  chipping  sparrows,  field  sparrows,  tree 
sparrows,  swamp  sparrows,  vesper  sparrows,  white- 
throated  sparrows,  fox  sparrows,  yellow-winged 
sparrows,  savanna  sparrows,  and  the  like,  and 
when  they  see  any  little  mottled  brown  bird, 


84  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

they  say, "  Oh,  it 's  a  sparrow/'  and  seek  to  know 
nothing  more. 

The  family  of  warblers  —  among  the  loveliest 
of  all  birds  —  are  in  a  still  worse  case,  and  much 
the  same  may  be  said  of  swallows  and  blackbirds, 
thrushes  and  vireos.  The  number  of  species  and 
their  perplexing  similarity,  which  are  such  an  at- 
traction to  the  student,  prove  an  effectual  bar  to 
those  who  have  time  and  money  for  newspapers 
and  novels,  but  can  spare  neither  for  a  manual 
of  local  ornithology. 

I  have  named  six  birds  which  every  one  knows, 
or  may  know,  but  of  course  I  do  not  mean  that 
these  are  all.  Why  should  not  everybody  know 
the  goldfinch  —  a  small,  stout-billed,  bright  yel- 
low, canary-like  bird,  with  black  wings  and  tail 
and  a  black  cap  ?  And  the  flicker  —  or  golden- 
winged  woodpecker  —  a  little  larger  than  the 
robin,  with  gold-lined  wings,  a  black  crescent  on 
the  breast,  a  red  patch  on  the  back  of  the  head, 
and  a  white  rump,  conspicuous  as  the  bird  takes 
wing  ?  The  hummingbird,  too  —  our  only  one  ; 
I  should  say  that  everybody  ought  to  recognize 
it,  only  that  I  have  found  some  who  confuse 
it  with  sphinx  moths,  and  will  hardly  believe 
me  when  I  tell  them  of  their  mistake.  The 
cedar-bird,  likewise,  known  also  as  the  cherry- 
bird  and  the  waxwing,  is  a  bird  by  itself ;  re- 


BIRDS  FOR  EVERYBODY  85 

markably  trim  and  sleek,  its  upper  parts  of  a 
peculiarly  warm  cinnamon  brown,  its  lower  parts 
yellowish,  its  tail  tipped  handsomely  with  yellow, 
its  head  marked  with  black  and  adorned  with  a 
truly  magnificent  top-knot ;  as  .great  a  lover  of 
cherries  as  any  schoolboy,  and  one  of  the  first 
birds  upon  which  the  youthful  taxidermist  tries 
his  hand.  Just  now  —  in  early  March  —  the 
waxwings  are  hereabout  in  great  flocks  (I  saw 
more  than  a  hundred,  surely,  three  days  ago), 
stuffing  themselves,  literally,  with  savin  berries. 
These  large  flocks  will  after  a  while  disappear, 
and  some  time  later,  in  May,  smaller  companies 
will  arrive  from  the  South  and  settle  with  us  for 
the  summer,  helping  themselves  to  our  cherries 
in  return  for  the  swarms  of  insects  of  whose  pre- 
sence they  have  relieved  us.  If  we  see  them  thus 
engaged,  we  shall  do  well  to  remember  the  Scrip- 
ture text,  "  The  laborer  is  worthy  of  his  hire." 

This  enumeration  of  birds,  so  strongly  marked 
that  even  a  wayfaring  man  may  easily  name  them, 
might  be  extended  indefinitely.  It  would  be  a 
strange  Massachusetts  boy  who  did  not  know  the 
ruffed  grouse  (though  he  would  probably  call 
him  the  partridge)  and  the  Bob  White ;  the  king- 
bird, with  his  black  and  white  plumage,  his  aerial 
tumblings,  and  his  dashing  pursuit  of  the  crow ; 
the  splendid  scarlet  tanager,  fiery  red,  with  black 


86  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

tail  and  wings;  the  bobolink;  the  red-winged 
blackbird,  whose  watery  conkaree  is  so  welcome 
a  sound  about  the  meadows  in  March ;  the  slate- 
colored  snowbird ;  the  indigo-bird,  small,  deep  blue 
throughout,  and  with  a  thick  bill ;  the  butcher- 
bird, a  constant  though  not  numerous  winter  vis- 
itor, sometimes  flying  against  windows  in  which 
canaries  are  hung,  as  one  did  at  our  house  only 
this  winter  —  these  surely  may  be  known  by  any 
who  will  take  even  slight  pains  to  form  their 
acquaintance.  And,  beside  these,  there  are  two 
birds  whom  everybody  does  know,  but  whom  I 
forgot  to  include  with  the  six  first  mentioned,  — 
the  catbird  and  the  brown  thrasher,  two  over- 
grown, long-tailed  wrens,  near  relatives  of  the 
mockingbird,  both  of  them  great  singers  in  their 
way,  and  one  of  them  —  the  catbird  —  decidedly 
familiar  and  a  fairly  good  mimic. 


XIX 

WINTER   PENSIONERS 

OUR  northern  winter  is  a  lean  time,  ornitho- 
logically,  though  it  brings  us  some  choice  birds 
of  its  own,  and  is  not  without  many  alleviations. 
When  the  redpolls  come  in  crowds  and  the  white- 
winged  crossbills  in  good  numbers,  both  of  which 
things  happened  last  year,  the  world  is  not  half 
so  bad  with  us  as  it  might  be.  Still,  winter  is 
winter,  a  season  to  be  tided  over  rather  than 
doted  upon,  and  anything  which  helps  to  make 
the  time  pass  agreeably  is  matter  for  thankful- 
ness. So  I  am  asked  to  write  something  about 
the  habit  we  are  in  at  our  house  of  feeding  birds 
in  cold  weather,  and  thus  keeping  them  under 
the  windows.  Really  we  have  done  nothing  pecu- 
liar, nor  has  our  success  been  beyond  that  of  many 
of  our  neighbors ;  but  such  as  it  is,  the  work  has 
given  us  much  enjoyment,  and  the  readers  of 
"  Bird-Lore  " 1  are  welcome  to  the  story. 

Our  method  is  to  put  out  pieces  of  raw  suet, 
mostly  the  trimmings  of  beefsteak.  These  we 

1  To  which  this  article  was  originally  contributed. 


88  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

attach  to  branches  of  trees  and  to  the  veranda 
trellis,  taking  pains,  of  course,  to  have  them 
beyond  the  cat's  reach  (that  the  birds  may  feed 
safely),  and  at  the  same  time  well  disposed  for 
our  own  convenience  as  spectators.  For  myself, 
in  addition,  I  generally  nail  pieces  of  the  bait 
upon  one  or  two  of  the  outer  sills  of  my  study 
windows.  I  like,  as  I  sit  reading  or  writing,  to 
hear  now  and  then  a  nuthatch  or  a  chickadee 
hammering  just  outside  the  pane.  Often  I  rise 
to  have  a  look  at  the  visitor.  There  is  nothing 
but  the  glass  between  us,  and  I  can  stand  near 
enough  to  see  his  beady  eyes,  and,  so  to  speak, 
the  expression  of  his  face.  Sometimes  two  birds 
are  there  at  once,  one  waiting  for  the  other. 
Sometimes  they  have  a  bit  of  a  set-to.  Then, 
certainly,  they  are  not  without  facial  expression. 
Once  in  a  while,  in  severe  weather,  I  have 
sprinkled  crumbs  (sweet  or  fatty  crumbs  are  best 
—  say  bits  of  doughnut)  on  the  inside  ledge,  and 
then,  with  the  window  raised  a  few  inches,  have 
awaited  callers.  If  the  weather  is  bad  enough 
they  are  not  long  in  coming.  A  chickadee 
alights  on  the  outer  sill,  notices  the  open  win- 
dow, scolds  a  little  (the  thing  looks  like  a  trap  — 
at  all  events  it  is  something  new,  and  birds  are 
conservative),  catches  sight  of  the  crumbs  (well, 
now,  that 's  another  story),  ceases  his  dee,  dee, 
dee,  and  the  next  minute  hops  inside. 


A   DOWNY   WOODPECKER 


^^^^—jj^M 

i 


A   BRANCH   ESTABLISHMENT 


WINTER  PENSIONERS  89 

The  crumbs  prove  to  be  appetizing,  and  by 
the  time  he  has  swallowed  a  few  of  them  he 
seems  to  forget  how  he  came  in,  and  instead  of 
backing  out,  as  a  reasonable  being  like  a  chick- 
adee might  be  expected  to  do,  he  flies  to  another 
light  of  the  bay  window.  Then,  lest  he  should 
injure  himself,  I  must  get  up  and  catch  him  and 
show  him  to  the  door.  By  the  time  I  have  done 
this  two  or  three  times  within  half  an  hour,  I 
begin  to  find  it  an  interruption  to  other  work, 
and  put  down  the  window.  White-breasted  nut- 
hatches and  downies  come  often  to  the  outer  sill, 
but  only  the  chickadees  ever  venture  inside. 

These  three  are  our  daily  pensioners.  If  they 
are  all  in  the  tree  together,  as  they  very  often 
are,  they  take  precedence  at  the  larder  according 
to  their  size.  No  nuthatch  presumes  to  hurry 
a  woodpecker,  and  no  chickadee  ever  thinks  of 
disturbing  a  nuthatch.  He  may  fret  audibly, 
calling  the  other  fellow  greedy,  for  aught  I  know, 
and  asking  him  if  he  wants  the  earth ;  but  he 
maintains  a  respectful  distance.  Birds,  like  wild 
things  in  general,  have  a  natural  reverence  for 
size  and  weight. 

The  chickadees  are  much  the  most  numerous 
with  us,  but  taking  the  year  together,  the  wood- 
peckers are  the  most  constant.  My  notes  record 
them  as  present  in  the  middle  of  October,  1899, 


90  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

and  now,  in  the  middle  of  October,  1900,  they 
are  still  in  daily  attendance.  Perhaps  there  were 
a  few  weeks  of  midsummer  when  they  stayed 
away,  but  I  think  not.  One  pair  built  a  nest 
somewhere  in  the  neighborhood  and  depended 
on  us  largely  for  supplies,  much  to  their  con- 
venience and  our  pleasure.  As  soon  as  the  red- 
capped  young  ones  were  able  to  fly,  the  parents 
brought  them  to  the  tree  and  fed  them  with  the 
suet  (it  was  a  wonder  how  much  of  it  they  could 
eat),  till  they  were  old  enough  to  help  them- 
selves. And  they  act,  old  and  young  alike,  as  if 
they  owned  the  place.  If  a  grocer's  wagon  hap- 
pens to  stop  under  the  tree  they  wax  indignant, 
and  remain  so  till  it  drives  away.  Even  the 
black  cat,  Satan,  has  come  to  acknowledge  their 
rights  in  the  case,  and  no  longer  so  much  as 
thinks  of  them  as  possible  game. 

I  have  spoken,  I  see,  as  if  these  three  species 
were  all ;  but,  not  to  mention  the  blue  jays, 
whose  continual  visits  are  rather  ineffectively 
frowned  upon  (they  carry  off  too  much  at  once), 
we  had  last  winter,  for  all  the  latter  half  of  it,  a 
pair  of  red-bellied  nuthatches.  They  dined  with 
us  daily  (pretty  creatures  they  are),  and  stayed  so 
late  in  the  spring  that  I  began  to  hope  the  handy 
food-supply  would  induce  them  to  tarry  for  the 
summer.  They  were  mates,  I  think.  At  any 


WINTER  PENSIONERS  91 

rate,  they  preferred  to  eat  from  the  same  bit  of 
fat,  one  on  each  side,  in  great  contrast  with  all 
the  rest  of  our  company.  Frequently,  too,  a 
brown  creeper  would  be  seen  hitching  up  the 
trunk  or  over  the  larger  limbs.  He  likes  plea- 
sant society,  though  he  has  little  to  say,  and 
perhaps  found  scraps  of  suet  in  the  crevices  of 
the  bark,  where  the  chickadees,  who  are  given 
to  this  kind  of  providence,  may  have  packed  it 
in  store.  Somewhat  less  frequently  a  goldcrest 
would  come  with  the  others,  fluttering  amid  the 
branches  like  a  sprite.  One  bird  draws  another, 
especially  in  hard  times.  And  so  it  happened 
that  our  tree,  or  rather  trees,  —  an  elm  and  a 
maple,  —  were  something  like  an  aviary  the 
whole  winter  through.  It  was  worth  more  than 
all  the  trouble  which  the  experiment  cost  us  to 
lie  in  bed  before  sunrise,  with  the  mercury  below 
zero,  and  hear  a  chickadee  just  outside  singing 
as  sweetly  as  any  thrush  could  sing  in  June.  If 
he  had  been  trying  to  thank  us,  he  could  not 
have  done  it  more  gracefully. 

The  worse  the  weather,  the  better  we  enjoyed 
the  birds'  society ;  and  the  better,  in  general, 
they  seemed  to  appreciate  our  efforts  on  their 
behalf.  It  was  noticeable,  however,  that  chicka- 
dees were  with  us  comparatively  little  during 
high,  cold  winds.  On  the  18th  of  February,  for 


92  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

example,  we  had  a  blizzard,  with  driving  snow, 
the  most  inclement  day  of  the  winter.  At  seven 
o'clock,  when  I  looked  out,  four  downy  wood- 
peckers were  in  the  elm,  all  trying  their  best  to 
eat,  though  the  branches  shook  till  it  was  hard 
work  to  hold  on.  They  stayed  much  of  the 
forenoon.  At  ten  o'clock,  when  the  storm 
showed  signs  of  abating,  though  it  was  still  wild 
enough,  a  chickadee  made  his  appearance  and 
whistled  Phoebe  again  and  again  — "a  long 
time,"  my  note  says  —  in  his  cheeriest  manner. 
Who  can  help  loving  a  bird  so  courageous,  "  so 
frolic,  stout,  and  self-possest "  ?  Emerson  did 
well  to  call  him  a  "  scrap  of  valor."  Yet  I  find 
from  a  later  note  that  "  there  were  nothing  like 
the  usual  number  of  chickadees  so  long  as  the 
fury  lasted."  Doubtless  most  of  them  stayed 
among  the  evergreens.  It  is  an  old  saying  of 
the  chickadee's,  frequently  quoted,  "  Be  bold, 
be  bold,  but  not  too  bold."  On  the  same  day  I 
saw  a  member  of  the  household  snowballing  an 
English  sparrow  away  from  one  branch,  while 
a  downy  woodpecker  continued  to  feed  upon  the 
next  one.  The  woodpecker  had  got  the  right 
idea  of  things.  Honest  folk  need  not  fear  the 
constable. 


XX 

WATCHING    THE   PROCESSION 

IT  begins  to  go  by  my  door  about  the  first  of 
March,  and  is  three  full  months  in  passing.  The 
participants  are  all  in  uniform,  each  after  his 
kind,  some  in  the  brightest  of  colors,  some  in 
Quakerish  grays  and  browns.  They  seem  not  to 
stand  very  strictly  upon  the  order  of  their  com- 
ing ;  red-coats  and  blue-coats  travel  side  by  side. 
Like  the  flowers,  they  have  a  calendar  of  their 
own,  and  in  their  own  way  are  punctual,  but 
their  movements  are  not  to  be  predicted  with 
anything  like  mathematical  nicety.  Of  some 
companies  of  them  I  am  never  certain  which  will 
precede  the  other,  just  as  I  can  never  tell 
whether,  in  a  particular  season,  the  anemone  or 
the  five-finger  will  come  first  into  bloom.  They 
need  no  bands  of  music,  no  drum-corps  nor  fif  ers. 
The  whole  procession,  indeed,  is  itself  a  band  of 
music,  a  grand  army  of  singers  and  players  on 
instruments.  They  sing  many  tunes  ;  each  uni- 
form has  a  tune  of  its  own,  but,  unlike  what 


94  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

happens  in  military  and  masonic  parades,  there 
is  never  any  jangling,  no  matter  how  near  to- 
gether the  different  bands  may  be  marching. 

As  I  said,  the  pageant  lasts  for  three  months. 
It  is  fortunate  for  me,  perhaps,  that  it  lasts  no 
longer ;  for  the  truth  is,  I  have  grown  so  fond 
of  watching  it  that  I  find  it  hard  to  attend  to 

o 

my  daily  work  so  long  as  the  show  continues. 
If  I  go  inside  for  half  a  day,  to  read  or  to  write, 
I  am  all  the  time  thinking  of  what  is  going  on 
outside.  Who  knows  what  I  may  be  missing  at 
this  very  minute  ?  I  keep  by  me  a  prospectus 
of  the  festival,  a  list  of  all  who  are  expected  to 
take  part  in  it,  and,  like  most  watchers  of  such 
parades,  I  have  my  personal  favorites  for  whom 
I  am  always  on  the  lookout.  One  thing  troubles 
me  :  there  is  never  a  year  that  I  do  not  miss  a 
good  many  (a  bad  many,  I  feel  like  saying)  of 
those  whose  names  appear  in  the  announcements. 
Some  of  them,  indeed,  I  have  never  seen.  If 
they  are  really  in  the  ranks,  it  must  be  that  their 
numbers  are  very  small;  for  the  printed  pro- 
gramme tells  exactly  how  they  will  be  dressed, 
and  I  am  sure  I  should  recognize  them  if  they 
came  within  sight.  Some  of  them,  I  fancy,  do 
not  keep  their  engagements. 

I  spoke,  to  begin  with,  of  their  passing  my 
door.  But  I  spoke  figuratively.  Some,  it  is 


WATCHING  THE  PROCESSION  95 

true,  do  pass  my  door,  and  even  tarry  for  a  day 
or  two  under  my  windows,  but  to  see  others  I 
have  to  go  into  the  woods.  Some  I  find  only  in 
deep,  almost  impenetrable  swamps,  dodging  in 
and  out  among  thick  bushes  and  cat-tails.  A 
good  many  follow  the  coast.  I  watch  them  run- 
ning along  the  sea-beach  on  the  edge  of  the  surf, 
or  walking  sedately  over  muddy  flats  where  I 
need  rubber  boots  in  which  to  follow  them. 
Some  are  silent  during  the  day,  but  as  darkness 
comes  on  indulge  in  music  and  queer  aerial 
dancing. 

Many  travel  altogether  by  night,  resting  and 
feeding  in  the  daytime.  It  is  pleasant  to  stand 
out  of  doors  in  the  evening,  and  hear  them  call- 
ing to  each  other  overhead  as  they  hasten  north- 
ward ;  for  at  this  time  of  the  year,  I  have  forgot- 
ten to  say,  they  are  always  traveling  in  a  northerly 
direction. 

The  procession,  as  such,  has  no  definite  ter- 
minus. It  breaks  up  gradually  by  the  dropping 
out  of  its  members  here  and  there.  Each  of 
them  knows  pretty  well  where  he  is  going.  This 
one,  who  came  perhaps  from  Cuba,  means  to  stop 
in  Massachusetts;  that  one,  after  a  winter  in 
Central  America,  has  in  view  a  certain  swamp  or 
meadow,  or,  it  may  be,  some  mountain-top,  in 
New  Hampshire ;  another  will  not  be  at  home  till 


96  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

he  reaches  the  furthermost  coast  of  Labrador  or 
the  banks  of  the  Saskatchewan.  The  prospectus 
of  which  I  spoke,  and  of  which  every  reader 
ought  to  have  a  copy,  tells,  in  a  general  way, 
whither  each  company  is  bound,  but  the  members 
of  the  same  company  often  scatter  themselves 
over  several  degrees  of  latitude.  ' 

Some  of  the  companies  move  compactly,  and 
are  only  two  or  three  days,  more  or  less,  in  pass- 
ing a  given  point.  You  must  be  in  the  woods, 
for  example,  on  the  12th  or  13th  of  May,  or  you 
will  miss  them  altogether.  Others  straggle  along 
for  a  whole  month.  You  begin  to  think,  perhaps, 
that  they  mean  to  stay  with  you  all  summer,  but 
some  morning  you  wake  up  to  the  fact  that  the 
last  one  has  gone. 

It  is  curious  how  few  people  see  this  army  of 
travelers.  They  pass  by  thousands  and  hundreds 
of  thousands.  More  than  a  hundred  different 
companies  go  through  every  town  in  Massa- 
chusetts between  March  1  and  June  1.  They 
dress  gayly  —  not  a  few  of  them  seem  to  have 
borrowed  Joseph's  coat  —  and  are  full  of  music, 
yet  somehow  their  advent  excites  little  remark. 
Perhaps  it  is  because,  for  the  most  part,  they  flit 
from  bush  to  bush  and  from  tree  to  tree,  here 
one  and  there  one.  If  some  year  they  should 
form  in  line,  and  move  in  close  order  along  the 


WATCHING  THE  PROCESSION  97 

public  streets,  what  a  stir  they  would  excite  !  For 
a  day  or  two  the  newspapers  would  be  full  of 
the  sensation,  and  possibly  the  baseball  reporters 
would  be  compelled  for  once  to  shorten  their  ac- 
counts of  Batt urn's  "  wonderful  left-hand  catch  " 
and  Ketchum's  "  phenomenal  slide  to  the  second 
base."  It  is  just  as  well,  I  dare  say,  that  nothing 
of  this  kind  should  ever  happen,  for  it  is  hard  to 
see  how  the  great  reading  public  could  bear  even 
the  temporary  loss  of  such  interesting  and  instruc- 
tive narratives. 

Meantime,  though  the  greater  part  of  the  peo- 
ple pay  no  heed  to  these  "  birds  of  passage/' 
some  of  us  are  never  tired  of  watching  them.  I 
myself  used  to  be  fond  of  gazing  at  military  and 
political  parades.  In  my  time  I  have  seen  a  good 
many  real  soldiers  and  a  good  many  make-believes. 
But  as  age  comes  on,  I  find  myself,  rightly  or 
wrongly,  caring  less  and  less  for  such  spectacles. 
It  will  never  be  so,  I  think,  with  the  procession 
of  which  I  am  now  writing.  I  have  never  watched 
it  with  more  enthusiasm  than  this  very  year.  It 
is  only  just  over,  but  I  am  already  beginning 
to  count  upon  its  autumnal  return,  and  by  the 
middle  of  August  shall  be  looking  every  day  for 
its  advance  couriers. 

Till  then  I  shall  please  myself  with  observing 
the  ways  of  such  of  the  host  as  have  happened 


98  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

to  drop  out  of  the  procession  in  my  immediate 
neighborhood.  One  of  them  I  can  hear  singing 
at  this  very  moment.  He  and  his  wife  spent  the 
winter  in  Mexico,  as  well  as  I  can  determine,  and 
have  been  back  with  us  since  the  llth  of  May. 
They  have  pitched  their  tent  for  the  summer  in 
the  top  of  a  tall  elm  directly  in  front  of  my  door, 
and  just  now  are  much  occupied  with  household 
cares.  The  little  husband  (Vireo  gilvus  he  is 
called  in  the  official  programme,  but  I  have  heard 
him  spoken  of,  not  inappropriately,  as  the  war- 
bling vireo)  takes  upon  himself  his  full  share  of 
the  family  drudgery,  and  it  is  very  pretty  indeed 
to  see  him  sitting  in  the  tent  and  singing  at  his 
work.  He  sets  us  all,  as  I  think,  an  excellent 
example. 


XXI 

SOUTHWARD    BOUND 

WHILE  walking  through  a  piece  of  pine  wood, 
three  or  four  days  ago,  I  was  delighted  to  put 
my  eye  unexpectedly  upon  a  hummingbird's  nest. 
The  fairy  structure  was  placed  squarely  upon  the 
upper  surface  of  a  naked,  horizontal  branch,  and 
looked  so  fresh,  trimmed  outwardly  with  bits  of 
gray  lichen,  that  I  felt  sure  it  must  have  been 
built  this  year.  But  where  now  were  the  birds 
that  built  it,  and  the  nestlings  that  were  hatched 
in  it  ?  Who  could  tell  ?  In  imagination  I  saw  the 
mother  sitting  upon  the  tiny,  snow-white  eggs, 
and  then  upon  the  two  little  ones  —  little  ones, 
indeed,  no  bigger  than  bumble-bees  at  first.  I 
saw  her  feeding  them  day  by  day,  as  they  grew 
larger  and  larger,  till  at  last  the  cradle  was  get- 
ting too  narrow  for  them,  and  they  were  ready  to 
make  a  trial  of  their  wings.  But  where  were  they 
now  ?  Not  here,  certainly.  For  a  fortnight  I  had 
been  passing  down  this  path  almost  daily,  and 
not  once  had  I  seen  a  hummingbird. 


100  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

No,  they  are  not  here,  and  even  as  I  write  I 
seem  to  see  the  little  family  on  their  way  to  the 
far  south.  They  are  making  the  journey  by  easy 
stages,  I  hope — flitting  from  flower-bed  to  flower- 
bed, now  in  Connecticut,  now  in  New  Jersey,  and 
so  on  through  Pennsylvania  and  the  Southern 
States.  Will  they  cross  the  water  to  the  West 
Indies,  as  some  of  their  kind  are  said  to  do  ?  or,  ; 
less  adventurous,  will  they  keep  straight  on  to 
some  mountain-side  in  Costa  Kica,  or  even  in 
Brazil  ?  I  should  be  sorry  to  believe  that  the 
parent  birds  took  their  departure  first,  leaving 
the  twin  children  to  find  their  way  after  them  as 
best  they  could  —  as  those  who  have  paid  most 
attention  to  such  matters  assure  us  that  many  of 
our  birds  are  in  the  habit  of  doing.  But  how- 
ever they  go,  and  wherever  they  end  their  long 
journey,  may  wind  and  weather  be  favorable,  and 
old  and  young  alike  return,  after  the  winter  is 
over,  to  build  other  nests  here  in  their  native 
New  England. 

o 

This  passing  of  birds  back  and  forth,  a  grand 
semi-annual  tide,  is  to  me  a  thing  of  wonder.  I 
think  of  the  millions  of  sandpipers  and  plovers 
which  for  two  months  (it  is  now  late  in  Septem- 
ber) have  been  pouring  southward  along  the  sea- 
coast.  Some  of  them  passed  here  on  their  way 
north  no  longer  ago  than  the  last  days  of  May. 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND  101 

They  went  far  up  toward  the  Arctic  circle,  but 
before  the  end  of  July  they  were  back  again, 
hastening  to  the  equator.  The  golden  plover, 
we  are  told,  travels  from  Greenland  to  Pata- 
gonia. 

All  summer  the  golden  warblers  were  singing 
within  sound  of  my  windows.  As  I  walked  I  saw 
them  flitting  in  and  out  of  the  roadside  bushes, 
beautiful  and  delicate  creatures.  But  before  the 
first  of  September  the  last  of  them  disappeared. 
I  did  not  see  them  depart.  They  took  wing  in 
the  night,  and  almost  before  I  suspected  it  they 
were  gone.  They  will  winter  in  Central  or  South 
America,  and,  within  a  week  of  May-day,  we  shall 
have  them  here  again,  as  much  at  home  as  if  they 
had  never  left  us. 

They  were  gone  before  the  first  of  September, 
I  said.  But  I  was  thinking  of  those  which  had 
summered  in  Massachusetts.  In  point  of  fact,  I 
saw  a  golden  warbler  only  ten  days  ago.  He  was 
with  a  mixed  flock  of  travelers,  and,  in  all  like- 
lihood, had  come  from  the  extreme  north  ;  for 
this  dainty,  blue-eyed  warbler  is  common  in  sum- 
mer, not  only  throughout  the  greater  part  of  the 
United  States,  but  on  the  very  shores  of  the  Arc- 
tic Ocean.  So  he  voyages  back  and  forth,  living 
his  life  from  land  to  land,  as  Tennyson  says,  led 
by  who  knows  what  impulse  ? 


102  EVERYDAY  BIRDS 

"  Sweet  bird,  thy  bower  is  ever  green, 

Thy  sky  is  ever  clear  ; 
Thou  hast  no  sorrow  in  thy  song, 
No  winter  in  thy  year." 


It  is  worth  giving  a  little  time  daily  to  what  is 
called  ornithology  to  be  able  to  greet  such  wan- 
derers as  they  come  and  go.  For  some  days  now 
a  few  Western  palm  warblers  have  been  paying 
•as  a  visit,  and,  though  the  town  has  never  com- 
missioned me  to  that  office,  I  have  taken  it  upon 
myself  to  do  them  the  honors.  They  have  met 
nie  halfway,  at  least,  as  the  everyday  expression 
is ;  yielding  readily  to  my  enticements,  and  more 
than  once  coming  near  enough  to  show  me  their 
white  lower  eyelids,  so  that  I  might  be  quite  sure 
of  their  identity.  A  little  later  the  Eastern  palm 
warbler  will  be  due,  and  I  hope  to  find  him  equally 
complaisant ;  for  I  wish  to  see  his  lower  eyelid, 
also,  which  is  yellow  instead  of  white. 

At  this  time  of  the  year,  indeed,  there  is  no 
lack  of  such  interesting  and  well-dressed  stran- 
gers, no  matter  where  we  may  go.  The  woods 
are  alive  with  them  by  day,  and  the  air  by  night. 
There  are  few  evenings  when  you  may  not  hear 
them  calling  overhead  as  they  hasten  southward. 
Men  who  have  watched  them  through  telescopes, 
pointed  at  the  full  moon,  have  calculated  their 
height  at  one  or  two  miles.  One  observer  saw 


SOUTHWARD  BOUND  103 

more  than  two  hundred  cross  the  moon's  disk  in 
two  hours.  The  greater  part  passed  so  swiftly  as 
to  make  it  impossible  to  say  more  than  that  they 
were  birds ;  but  others,  flying  at  a  greater  alti- 
tude, and  therefore  traversing  the  field  of  vision 
less  rapidly,  were  identified  as  blackbirds,  rails, 
snipe,  and  ducks.  Another  observer  plainly 
recognized  swallows,  warblers,  goldfinches,  and 
woodpeckers. 

All  over  the  northern  hemisphere  to-night,  in 
America,  Europe,  and  Asia,  countless  multitudes 
of  these  wayfarers  will  be  coursing  the  regions  of 
the  upper  air ;  and  to-morrow,  if  we  go  out  with 
our  eyes  open,  we  shall  find,  here  and  there,  busy 
little  flocks  of  stragglers  that  have  stopped  by 
the  way  to  rest  and  feed  :  sparrows,  snowbirds, 
kinglets,  nuthatches,  chickadees,  thrushes,  war- 
blers, wrens,  and  what  not,  a  few  of  them  singing, 
and  every  one  of  them  evidently  in  love  with  life, 
and  full  of  happy  expectations. 


INDEX 


Bittern :  — 

American,  68. 

least,  78. 

Blackbird,  red-winged,  86. 
Bluebird,  44,  59,  83. 
Bob  White,  85. 
Bobolink,  86. 
Butcher-bird,  19,  86. 

Catbird,  86. 

Cedar-bird,  84. 

Chickadee,    7,     12,    83,    88,    91, 

92. 

Chimney  swift,  56,  63. 
Creeper,  brown,  10,  91. 
Crossbill,  white-winged,  87. 
Crow,  44,  49,  83. 

Flicker,  64,  84. 

Goldfinch,  84. 
Grosbeak  :  — 

cardinal,  25. 

rose-breasted,  36,  40. 
Grouse,  85. 

Hummingbird,  ruby-throated,  51, 

63,  84,  99. 

Indigo-bird,  86. 
Jay,  blue,  43,  83,  90. 


Kingbird,  47,  85. 
Kinglet :  — 

golden-crowned,  1,  91. 

ruby-crowned,  1. 

Migration,  93,  99. 
Mockingbird,  16. 

Nighthawk,  60. 
Nuthatch :  — 

red-breasted,  90. 

white-breasted,  88,  89. 

Oriole,  Baltimore,  83. 

Partridge,  85. 
Plover,  golden,  101. 
Plovers,  100. 
Purple  finch,  36,  37. 

Redpoll  linnet,  87. 
Robin,  83. 

Sandpipers,  100. 
Shrike :  — 

great  northern,  19,  86. 

loggerhead,  21. 
Snipe,  61. 

Snowbird  (junco),  36,  59,  86. 
Sparrow  :  — 

chipping,  30,  31. 

English,  30,  92. 


106 


INDEX 


field,  30,  32,  36,  37. 
fox,  36,  37. 
Ipswich,  38. 
savanna,  26,  38. 
song,  26,  36,  37,  39,  83. 
tree,  36,  37,  38. 
vesper,  26,  36,  37,  39. 
white-throated,  36,  37,  38. 
Swift,  chimney,  56,  63. 

Tanager :  — 

scarlet,  22,  85. 

southern,  25. 
Thrasher,  brown,  15,  86. 


Vireo,  warbling,  98. 

Vireos,  84. 

Vulture,  California,  1,  4. 

Warbler :  — 

golden,  101. 

palm,  102. 
Warblers,  84. 
Waxwing,  cedar,  84. 
Whip-poor-will,  60. 
Woodcock,  61. 
Woodpecker :  — 

downy,  89,  92. 

golden-winged,  64,  84. 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

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TEL.  NO.  642-2532 

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